Ambulance Service of Manchester's Size, Service Appeal to South Windsor

There has been some sentiment in town that by taking the contract for ambulance service from South Windsor Ambulance Corps and awarding it to Ambulance Service of Manchester that the Town Council has turned its back on the local guys.

But that picture may not be entirely accurate.

“We are the local guys,” said David Skoczulek, a manager and 15-year veteran paramedic with ASM. “We’ve been doing this since 1987 and we’ve worked hard to show our commitment to the town.”

ASM began providing ambulance service to South Windsor in 1987, when SWAC was a volunteer organization. ASM responded to calls during the day, when SWAC volunteers were at their day jobs. This arrangement went on until about 2004, Town Manager Matthew Galligan said, when SWAC took over round-the-clock responsibility for the town’s basic life support calls. ASM continued to provide South Windsor’s advanced life support, or paramedic service.

Now, if the town gets its way, ASM would take over both types of response for no cost to the town, as the chosen bidder on an RFP the town issued in 2013.

“They’ve done a good job for South Windsor for a long time. “We chose them because they were reliable, had no outstanding issues and came in at a bid to provide the service for $0,” Town Manager Matthew Galligan said.

Skoczulek said that as South Windsor has evolved, so has its needs for an ambulance provider.

“South Windsor is a big town with a complex industrial area and different sections. Part of what the town was looking at is who can meet a need that will swell up at any time to 5 to 6 calls at a time,” Skoczulek said.

For ASM, that’s a drop in the bucket.

The company which is made up of Ambulance Service of Manchester, sister company Aetna and Metro Wheelchair Service, comprises a fleet of 40 ambulances responding to calls throughout Manchester, East Hartford, and all over Tolland and Hartford Counties. ASM alone runs 28 ambulances with 113 EMTs and paramedics but when need be, can call on the resources of the other companies.

Its size has proven to be a strength in the face of large-scale disasters.

The Hartford Distributors shooting was a dramatic example.

“Three minutes afterward we had eight ambulances in a convoy and a supervisor’s vehicle headed to Hartford Distributors.”

“There was a structure fire and we did nine transports without having to call for mutual aid. You can’t do that with one ambulance or two. We have 28… we can get everyone where they need to go without chaos,” he said.  

On a Tuesday, ASM dispatchers sit in front of an array of screens. One shows a spreadsheet of where all the company’s ambulances are, what type of calls they’re responding to and what staff are present. Another logs information about the call, another shows a map - complete with weather forecasts - pinpointing each ambulance, so the closest can be sent to incoming calls. Each town code is accompanied by an identifying tone, so ambulances can head toward the patient even before the dispatcher takes an address.

In one of ASM’s new offices, a full-time employee studies response times, looking for ways to tweak protocol to improve performance. Next door, a manager and veteran paramedic reviews call reports, providing next-day feedback to staff in cases of problematic or commendable incidents.

The new offices are part of the company’s renovations, which aim to both accommodate growth and upgrade to new technologies. In addition to a larger dispatch area, the new space will have two 45-person training rooms, with a stairway, broken floor and an embedded ambulance for new employees to practice on.

Though its ambulances, dispatchers and even in-house mechanics are located in Manchester, ASM paramedics covering South Windsor routinely wait for calls from within the town. Should the state clear the way for ASM to take over the town’s ambulance service contract, ASM would determine where to base those ambulances on the preference of town or by GPS information indicating the area of the most calls.

Already ASM has been in discussions with South Windsor Mayor Saud Anwar about how it might operate. Skoczulek said the company hopes to forge a transparent and cooperative relationship with an ambulance board.

While both ASM and the town of South Windsor are anticipating the Office of Emergency Management Services approve the town’s plan to replace SWAC as the town’s primary ambulance service provider, the process could be lengthy.

Either the town would have to file a complaint about SWAC, proving that its service is deficient, or legislation that will likely be proposed in February would need to be approved.

For now, Skoczulek said, ASM continues to provide the service it always has in South Windsor and both the company and the town continue in a wait-and-see mode.