By Christina Rogers
The Detroit News
TROY, Mich. — An Oakland County ambulance company is looking to spruce up the drab interiors of its emergency vehicles by installing flat-panel TVs and DVD players to entertain and soothe patients as the trucks speed between destinations.
Alliance Mobile Health, a 9-year-old company with a fleet of 28 trucks, hopes the new frills will help it better compete in Metro Detroit’s crowded health care market. Demand for medical services is sliding amid the weak economy and ambulance firms, like hospitals, need to add a little glitz to stand out.
“EMS is so traditional,” said Alliance CEO Laurie Thiel. “That’s part of the problem with our industry. People think: ambulance and stretcher. They’re not thinking about providing a better service.”
By gussying up its ambulance interiors, Alliance is latching onto a fast-growing yet controversial trend in the industry — dressing up medical services to make them more appealing to patients and their health care dollars.
Hospitals have led the charge, privatizing rooms and offering hotel-style comforts such as massages and gourmet chefs, looking to bolster their market presence in well-heeled suburbs, where patients tend to have better medical coverage.
Now, this tactic is trickling down to the ambulance industry.
Some critics, however, contend that splurging on medically unnecessary amenities contributes to skyrocketing health costs. “People who need ambulances need a different kind of comfort,” said John Griffith, a health policy professor at University of Michigan.
Seeking edge with patients
For Alliance, the changes are designed to woo bed-bound patients needing non-emergency transport, as well as hospitals and 911 agencies looking to contract with an ambulance service to run their calls. Insurers aren’t billed for the upgrades, Thiel said. And patients have the right to request a particular ambulance company for longer, non-emergency trips, such as those between a nursing home and hospital, she added. Such trips account for about 70 percent of Alliance’s business.
Along with the entertainment consoles, Alliance has added blanket warmers and ambient music to enliven the dark, narrow rear compartment where patients often ride strapped to a stretcher encircled by medical equipment.
The company, which began installing the 13-inch screens earlier this year, hopes to have them in all its trucks by this summer.
While Alliance won’t be the first to give DVD players a try — some ambulance companies have experimented with portable players — it is likely the only one in Michigan to have installed them in its trucks, industry leaders say.
“To actually mount them, that’s where Alliance is on the cutting edge,” said Dale Berry, CEO of Ann Arbor-based Huron Valley Ambulance and treasurer for the American Ambulance Association.
Metro Detroit is a competitive market for ambulance services and many hospitals jumping into the transport business over the last few years, Berry said. “Just like any business, ambulance services are trying to find ways to be cutting edge,” he said.
Thiel is quick to compare the company’s efforts to those of organizations like Henry Ford Health System, where patients at its new West Bloomfield hospital stay in all-private, feng shui-designed rooms with flat-panel TVs and wireless Internet.
“It’s real cutthroat here in Oakland County,” she said. “Everybody is trying to innovate to set themselves apart in the market.”
Some experts criticize move
The so-called “Ritz-Carlton approach,” which refers to hospitals mimicking the look and feel of high-end hotels, has drawn fire from health care experts who say the tactic only adds to fast-rising health care costs without improving the quality of medical care.
“Dressing up ambulances with ‘comfort’ features is a deliberate attempt to exploit insurance coverage,” said U-M’s Griffith. “People attracted by that stuff don’t need ambulances.”
Other ambulance operators also question the approach’s effectiveness in a service that prides itself on speed.
Bill Grubb, CEO of Star EMS in Pontiac, said his firm tried giving patients portable DVD players, but found the trips were too short and many riders got motion sickness. Ambulance rides can be bumpy, he noted.
Even so, Star EMS does offer patients locally-made blankets that swaddle the body like a “burrito wrap,” he added.
Huron Valley Ambulance’s Berry said his company is watching Alliance’s efforts closely, but noted most people who need ambulances are sick, in pain, unconscious or suffer from dementia.
Thiel defended the extra features saying the company will cover the $8,000 in upgrade costs by selling old, out-of-service trucks and doesn’t plan to pass the expense onto insurers who pay predetermined, fixed-rates for ambulance transport.
While motion-sickness is a concern, “the benefits are still going to outweigh the negative,” Thiel said.
Besides, she added, if the TV makes patients uncomfortable, they can “just turn it off.”
Republished with the permission of the The Detroit News