Few options for emergency care

There are 40 licensed, private and nonprofit ambulance services in Philadelphia, but most don't represent an alternative to your 911 call.

Many work for hospitals and nursing homes, focusing on non-emergency medical transport, such as picking up patients being released from the hospital and taking them to a nursing home.

But there are a few community-based, nonprofit ambulance services that do emergency runs for those who subscribe to them.

"We're a dying breed," said Rob Berkoff of Northeast Community Ambulance. "We began as a fully volunteer ambulance squad in 1947."

Northeast Community Ambulance has more than 1,000 registered households who call it for emergencies. There are a few other neighborhood-based ambulance squads like Northeast.

Berkoff said he remembers a day 15 years ago when Fire Department paramedics would call in a jam and ask Northeast to take a call they were too busy or too far from to handle quickly.

But for years, the city has had a policy of not using nonmunicipal carriers.

"I think the city is going to have to take a good, hard look at their options," said Dean Bollendorf, president of the Roxborough-based Network Ambulance Services and the Ambulance Association of Pennsylvania. "There's a lot of stress on the Fire Department's EMS system. We know their paramedics are running from call to call."

Bollendorf said the nonmunicipal ambulances aren't much relief for the 911 system operating independently, but they could be important during peak times if the city decided to use them.

They'd have to work out financial, legal and communications issues, Bollendorf said, but he's sure several companies would be willing to make emergency runs when they're needed. *