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Bartlesville Ambulance celebrated 45 years of service to our communities this week.

Administrator Dan Dalton said they purchased the ambulance service from a funeral home back on May 31, 1976. Dalton said it was common for funeral homes to run ambulance services back then. He said all funeral homes were getting out of the business by 1986.

Bartlesville Ambulance transitioned from the hearse and station wagons to the yellow modular boxes that you may see screaming across town some days. Dalton said it has been a rough go over the years as they've made other moves in their business. He said they started at an EMT level but they've gradually made their way to the paramedic level.

Moving from basic life support to paramedic life support, Dalton said they had to purchase expensive equipment and hire trained personnel to make it work. He said it took them two to three years to get to the full paramedic system.

Para-medicine didn't come around until 1990. Dalton said he graduated from paramedic school in 1995. He said use to do para-medicine by himself back then because they didn't have a full staff of paramedics until 1990.

Today there are 32 people on the payroll at Bartlesville Ambulance. Dalton said they also have six to seven PRN's on-call as needed.

Dalton said getting to the full paramedic system was probably the best thing that could happen to Bartlesville Ambulance over the years. He said Medicare reimburses them better at the paramedic level than they did at the basic life support level. That has given Bartlesville Ambulance the shot in the arm that they've needed to purchase the equipment and hire the personnel that have improved their operations.

Bartlesville Ambulance runs approximately 6,000 calls a year. Dalton said most of those calls are medical calls involving patients with cardiac and respiratory issues. He said they get their fair share of trauma calls, but most of the calls revolve around sickness since Bartlesville is mostly a retirement community.

There has been an increase in transports to Tulsa from Bartlesville, too. Dalton said hospitals are concentrating on their doctors in larger facilities, so more complicated issues (i.e. complicated fractures, dialysis, etc.) are sent to our neighbors to the south. He said the resources aren't here so they're sent to Ascension St. John in Tulsa.

Looking ahead to the next 45 years, Dalton said the training that they're starting to see is getting them to the point of physician's assistant. Dalton said he believes the idea is to get paramedics into rural cities because the rural areas are having a hard time providing EMS. He said we'll probably see a regionalization where several regions will operate an ambulance service instead of having cities in rural areas running their own ambulance service.

In Oklahoma, it is mandated that counties provide EMS. Dalton said county governments are responsible for providing EMS. He said they'll have to wait and see what that looks like in 45 years.

The main obstacle is getting paid for services that are rendered. Dalton said Medicare under funds the ambulance service; they're not paid what it costs to provide the services they offer. He said that forces them to raise their rates real high to compensate for Medicare's lack of payment.

Membership applications for Bartlesville Ambulance closed on Memorial Day, Monday, May 31. Dalton said the application process will open again in March 2022. He said a membership pays for any emergency ambulance service and any non-emergency that is medically necessary; the membership takes care of "out-of-pocket" costs and deductibles. Co-insurance payments take care of the cost to ensure that you do not get a bill.

Discounts for wheelchair services and lifting assistance are also available. Dalton said lifting assistance is not covered by the primary care membership. He said memberships cost $78 for a family and $66 for an individual.

For more information, you call or visit Bartlesville Ambulance. The phone number to call is 918.336.1111. Bartlesville Ambulance is located at 501 S. Quapaw Avenue.