NYC Health + Hospitals Redesigns Patient Transportation System to Reduce Wait Times, Increase Patient and Staff Satisfaction, and Improve Patient Retention
New inter-facility transport system features 26 new ambulances, guaranteed response and pick up times, and will generate new revenue through patient retention
Sep 27, 2019
NYC Health + Hospitals today announced a redesigned inter-facility ambulance system that will transport patients faster, make it easier for staff to order transport services, and ensures patients can be seamlessly transferred to the appropriate facility to improve patient retention. The new patient transportation system streamlines the logistics of transferring patients between hospitals and from hospital-to-home by consolidating from multiple transportation companies to one single vendor agreement with the medical transportation company Hunter Ambulance. The new system is expected to generate $21M in new insurance revenue through patient retention and complete more than 30,000 ambulance trips a year. The transition to a single transportation vendor builds on NYC Health + Hospitals’ continued priority of transforming the public health system to provide higher quality of comprehensive health care to all New Yorkers.
As part of the new agreement, Hunter Ambulance will purchase a fleet of 26 new ambulances dedicated to transport NYC Health + Hospitals patients, manage all dispatching activities and assign on-site coordinators to assist with transports. Hunter Ambulance will guarantee arrival for inter-facility emergency transports in 20 minutes or less, and ensure patients wait no more than one hour for routine, non-emergency transfers. The new transportation operation will also transition from a paper-based ordering system to a more reliable and efficient online process.
“Transitioning to a single-vendor transportation system is a win for our patients, health care providers, and facilities,” said Mitchell Katz, MD, President and CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals. “Patients will notice reduced wait times for transport to a nearby facility, and our physicians can be assured that their patients will get to a facility in a specific time window. The new system knits our facilities together like never before, creating an inter-facility network that is convenient, reliable and of the highest quality.”
“The City’s public health system is committed to achieving a transportation program as advanced and detailed as the medical care provided within the system’s acute care facilities,” said Dan Leibowitz, President and CEO of Hunter Ambulance. “Hunter was tasked to coordinate medical and non-medical transportation for patients at any level of care, and to do so Hunter incorporated the latest computer aided dispatching software. Hunter took a new approach to coordinating and dispatching ambulances by creating a network of ambulance services dedicated to specific hospitals as well as creating a response plan for specific types of urgent medical situations, the first such network in NYC.”
“Timely medical transportation can be a matter of life and death,” said Assembly Health Committee Chair Richard N. Gottfried. “That’s why NYC Health + Hospitals’ new ambulances and communications systems are so important. Having a single, integrated transportation network will ensure that NYC Health + Hospitals patients get where they need to be as quickly as possible.”
Prior to this transition, each facility coordinated its own patient transportation, creating an inefficient network of transportation providers. The transition to a single vendor streamlines coordination between facility and transport, and improves turn-around time leading to improved patient and provider satisfaction. The expected annual cost to NYC Health + Hospitals for ambulance service is $2.4 million. In the first phase, Hunter Ambulance will provide transports at all NYC Health + Hospital’s s acute care facilities.
Hunter Ambulance was selected through a competitive RFP process issued in 2017. The Group is a part of the FDNY network of ambulances and is based out of the Bronx.