Rural/Metro spends $300,000 on technology upgrades

SYRACUSE  —  Rural/Metro Medical Services of Central New York is loading up on new technology in an attempt to boost efficiency and improve patient care, according to its division general manager, Michael Addario.

The ambulance company spent about $300,000 to upgrade its computer hardware, software, computer-aided dispatch system, and vehicle-locator system. Money also went to replacing Rural/Metro’s radio system.

“We did it all at once because everything’s so integrated,” Addario says. “We wanted to make sure we did it the right way rather than piecemeal it.”

Radio-system replacements will likely be completed in two to three weeks, Addario says. The other upgrades were largely performed over a two-week period starting Oct. 17.

Rural/Metro funded the technological work using its own cash. About 85 percent of the upgrades went to operations based at its Syracuse headquarters, a 26,000-square-foot building at 488 W. Onondaga St. that it leases from the property owner, Martin Yenawine.

The radio work will replace a setup that was essentially two radio systems, Addario says. Rural/Metro operates two dispatch centers — one at its Syracuse headquarters and one in Canajoharie in Montgomery County — and they were not able to talk to vehicles across the ambulance company’s six-county service area. The new system will allow the centers to communicate with any ambulance in that service area, from Cayuga County in the west to Montgomery County in the east.

It could also allow Rural/Metro to consolidate weekday dispatch operations in Syracuse, according to Addario. The ambulance company hasn’t made a final decision in that matter, and the Canajoharie center would still handle dispatching on the weekends, he adds.

Addario doesn’t anticipate the potential dispatch consolidation resulting in any employee layoffs. Rural/Metro employs nearly 300 people, about 260 in Syracuse.

Improvements to Rural/Metro’s computer-aided dispatching system and vehicle-locator system made up another major part of its technological investment.

“We upgraded our computer-aided dispatching system with new hardware, new software,” Addario says. “We were working on trying to interface with Onondaga County’s 911 Center.”

The upgrades enable the 911 center to see all Rural/Metro vehicles through the computer-aided dispatch system. And improvements helped Rural/Metro share information between its paperless patient-care reporting system, computer-aided dispatch system, and billing system.

That will increase efficiency while aiding research into patient outcomes and field protocols, Addario says.

“It allows us to have some really robust clinical reporting capabilities,” he says. “It gives us a huge database of information to be able to look at for research projects.”

Other technology purchases include 41 computers that ride with ambulances for use on calls, replacing older equipment. Rural/Metro also moved to a new virtual server environment, storing information offsite to protect it in the event of a disaster that knocks out power and prevents the ambulance company from running its own backup generator.

In addition to the $300,000 in technology capital improvements, Rural/Metro is replacing a quarter of its ambulance fleet this year. It has already replaced six vehicles and plans to roll out three more replacements by the end of the year.

Each ambulance costs around $100,000, Addario says. Again, Rural/Metro is using its own cash to pay for the investment. The company has 27 ambulances in Syracuse and nine that typically serve Herkimer, Montgomery, and Schoharie counties.

Rural/Metro Medical Services of Central New York operates in Onondaga, Cayuga, Madison, Herkimer, Montgomery, and Schoharie counties. It responds to more than 60,000 calls annually.

The ambulance company does not disclose local revenue totals. Its parent firm, Scottsdale, Ariz.–based Rural/Metro Corp., was acquired in June 2011 by the global private-equity firm Warburg Pincus.

Contact Seltzer at rseltzer@cnybj.com