By Clay Bailey
The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)
Copyright 2007 The Commercial Appeal, Inc.
For the second straight day, Professional Medical Transport’s bid to provide ambulance service in a suburb drew questions on how it could be done for such a low price.
The Knoxville-based company, as it had in Collierville on Monday, was the low bidder for the ambulance contract in Germantown, saying they could provide the service for a base price of $613,179 annually.
That was almost half the price of the lowest among the other three companies submitting bids for Tuesday’s opening in Germantown. And the rest of the vendors and some city officials are interested in the details of ProMed’s bid to make sure the company can meet the demands outlined by the suburbs.
“I’m surprised at some of the bids; some of them came in a lot lower than I ever thought I would see for a small operation like this,” said Glenn Miller of Rural/Metro. "(That’s) just not enough revenue to sustain an ambulance operation.”
Rural/Metro, which provides service to Germantown through a county contract, was the next lowest bidder with a base cost of slightly more than $1.1 million.
“I don’t want to give up trade secrets, but we attempt in every market we pursue, to give people a fair price for the product,” said Dan Henderlight, president of ProMed, when asked about their bid.
Germantown and Collierville are considering separating from the county’s contract that provides ambulance service to five of the suburbs and unincorporated Shelby County. Rural/Metro provides that service to all of the areas, except Memphis and Bartlett, under a $1.01 million contract. Each entity pays its share based on the number of calls to its jurisdiction.
But Germantown and Collierville have questioned service levels of the county contract and expressed concerns about response times, leading to the two suburbs considering handling their own contracts for more control over the provider.
Monday’s bid opening in Collierville dealt with prices for an individual contract with Collierville and a joint agreement for service in Germantown and Collierville and for Collierville exclusively. ProMed was the low bidder in both cases on Monday also, company officials saying they could handle the joint contract for a base bid of $691,633 and for Collierville alone for $554,679.
Germantown’s criteria calls for three ambulances based in the city, and if more than two are tied up on calls, another one is moved inside the boundaries within 15 minutes. The units will be based in Germantown fire stations and dispatched by the Fire Department, Fire Chief Dennis Wolf said.
While ProMed serves other communities in the state, it is just making inroads in West Tennessee. But Henderlight said going low on the two bids was not a strategy to lose money in exchange for establishing the ambulance company in this area.
“We don’t do that,” the company president said. “Our owners are our managers. We work together as a family to create the package that we have available. That’s one of the reasons we can do so much for less.”
He acknowledged the company has no presence in Shelby County and would need to establish offices and support operations to go with the service.
Besides Rural/Metro, the other two bidders for Germantown were Southland Health Services with a base bid of $2.075 million and American Medical Response at $1.338 million.
Michael Stoll, Germantown’s purchasing officer, told bidders the city will evaluate the bids and had several options to consider. In addition to having the service exclusively under a Germantown contract, the suburb is considering the joint operation with Collierville and remaining in the county contract.
Like everyone else, Wolf was surprised at how far ProMed’s price was under the other bidders. He said evaluating the bids to make sure the company can provide the service for that price is the key now. The city doesn’t want to get in a situation where it starts questioning performance levels again.
“I want to be sure he’s got the infrastructure, office staff to support the operation that he’s proposed to offer in Germantown,” Wolf said. "...We just need to make sure he understands all the details and specifications and he has thought about that, and he knows going in what to comply with.”