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Hunter's Ambulance Service, Inc. News
Web Site:
http://www.huntersamb.com
Hartford Healthcare Emergency Medical Services
450 West Main St.,
Meriden, CT 06451
Tel: (203) 235-3369
Fax: (203) 514-5122
Providing emergency and non-emergency medical transportation services via ambulances, wheelchair vans, special needs school buses, sedans, limousines, executive and limousine coaches. Serving you from 6 locations.
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Hunter's Ambulance Service recently installed the ...
December 3, 2002
Hunter's Ambulance Service recently installed the Global Positioning System (GPS) in the company's 29 ambulances. It is not meant to track every move of each employee, it is more service oriented. With uninterrupted wireless Internet service, dispatchers can locate the ambulance fleet via real-time computer maps, and they can make dispatch decisions for faster responses to emergencies. "It paints a bull's eye on the maps, and you can see who the closest ambulance is who is available," said David Lowell, director of operations for Hunter's Ambulance Service. "Prior to this, the only reliance was in the person's mind. Now they have a picture, which is a tremendous backup." Hunter's covers five towns, including Meriden. The locator system uses global positioning technology to broadcast to three satellites the locations of the ambulances. Hunter's went online with the system in June. Signals are updated every three seconds and transmitted to the dispatch center on a computerized map. The ambulances show up as red dots with information tags that identify the ambulances. For each vehicle the tags display a driving speed, the time it last moved and whether it is available to be dispatched to another emergency. The system cost about $250,000, not including map updates every six months. The system also allows ambulances and dispatchers to exchange text messages on small terminals inside each vehicle. The dispatchers can provide driving directions and patient information that might be too sensitive to transmit over a radio. "With the GPS, I was able to tell (a patient) where the ambulance was," said transportation coordinator Denise Lowell. It helps to be able to look at the screen and reassure callers than an ambulance will arrive shortly, she said, because for many patients "10 seconds seems like 10 hours."
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