City waives street rental

AMS gets break as long as company losing money

Posted: Thursday, May 20, 2004


Northwest Texas Healthcare System operates the ambulance service and has paid a street rental fee every year since Universal Health Services bought the hospital and privatized it.

The fee amounts to about $38,000 a year, said Moody Chisholm, chief executive officer.

Yet the hospital loses about $250,000 a year on the service, he said. The service runs about 12,000 ambulance trips a year, commonly for stabbings, gunshots, car accidents and falls.

"A lot of people have no coverage to pay their bill," Chisholm said. "We're trying to be more efficient and collect more money from the patients we care for."

Asking the city to waive the street rental fee as long as the ambulance service is unprofitable is one way the hospital is trying to reduce the financial loss.

The Amarillo City Commission on Wednesday voted to approve the amendment that creates the waiver.

City Manager John Ward agreed the hospital's request was logical. In most other places in Texas, cities and hospital districts fund the ambulance service or support it with subsidies, he said.

Universal Health Services agreed to buy the ambulance service in 1996 when it bought the hospital from Amarillo Hospital District. The hospital isn't legally obligated to continue providing it as a public service, although continuing it may give the hospital a competitive edge over Baptist St. Anthony's Health System, Ward said.

"If they don't (continue to offer it), we - the city or the hospital district - will end up having to provide it," he said.

"We're trying to accommodate them."