COMMERCE CITY —Northglenn Ambulance stopped being the first responders to all medical emergencies in Northglenn more than three years ago. Instead, it’s serving the residents of Commerce City.
The nonprofit ambulance company was formed in 1963 by volunteer residents in Northglenn. In 52 years, it has grown an estimated 750 percent, expanded to six fire stations — four in Commerce City and two in Denver — and shifted from all volunteers to a majority of full-time employees.
Today, its headquarters and dispatch center are still in Northglenn at 10655 Washington St., but the North Metro Fire Protection District, which responds in Northglenn, decided to bring ambulance services in-house a few years ago.
“When that happened, we opened up the two new stations in Denver to recover the losses from Northglenn,” said Rick Lindsey, who has been executive director of Northglenn Ambulance since 1995. “We were able to sustain the loss of our founding contract city without going through any layoffs because of that expansion.”
Contract ambulance service companies like Northglenn Ambulance have been dwindling over the last couple decades as fire departments and fire protection districts establish their own team of paramedics and buy their own fleets of ambulances.
But for some districts like the South Adams County Fire Protection District in Commerce City, which made the transition from an entirely volunteer fire district in recent years, it’s far more economical to work with a private ambulance service that provides its own equipment and pays its own paramedics.
“We’ve developed this partnership with Northglenn Ambulance, and from a scale of economy, South Adams Fire does not have the resources to have fire-based EMS,” said South Adams County Fire Chief Ron LaPenna. “It has been a very effective method of medical service delivery for us and the residents of Commerce City.”
Northglenn Ambulance started working in four out of eight fire stations in Commerce City in 1997.
Back then, firefighters in Commerce City were all volunteers, so Northglenn Ambulance trucks and medics lived and slept in the fire houses from which they were dispatched. Though many of the stations are now staffed with paid firefighters, the tradition of Northglenn Ambulance “living” in Commerce City fire stations continues.
“That’s very unique,” said Northglenn Ambulance paramedic Alex Wilkinson. “For a lot of contract ambulance services, the EMTs and paramedics will post up on a nearby street and wait for a call to come in. We actually live here with the firefighters while we’re on call.”
Fire Station No. 3 at 6550 East 72nd Ave. in Commerce City is the busiest station in the city, Wilkinson said. And that’s where he has worked for the past year.
On average, Northglenn Ambulance responds to 7,400 medical calls a year in Commerce City. Wilkinson said that’s about nine calls a day for situations ranging from residents having breathing difficulties to major car accidents and more.
“I remember this one call that happened last summer — a guy was taking a semi tractor trailer off of his tow truck and it ended up rolling on top of him,” said Heather King, a volunteer emergency medical technician with Northglenn Ambulance. “We got him stable and to the hospital.”
The company operates on a budget of about $5 million a year and is governed by a board of directors. All of its income comes from patient billing. There are 65 employees, 30 volunteers and 15 ambulances in the company.
Despite the decline in contracting with private ambulance companies, Lindsey said the need will always be there.
“Any ambulance service finds themselves maxed out at a certain point,” he said. “Economics make it impossible to have 80 ambulances in service so that you can handle 80 calls at once, so when area responders are stretched out, we can provide that auxiliary support pretty much anywhere in the metro area.”
Megan Mitchell: 303-954-2650, mmitchell@denverpost.com or
