Ambulance had rocky history before hospital's reign

April 28--Ambulance service has come a long way in St. Joseph since its tumultuous beginnings.

The service has been in the hospital's control for the past 41 years, but it wasn't always operated as such a well-oiled machine. Before the hospital's reign, nearly five private companies, including funeral homes, operated ambulances in the community.

It wasn't until 1965 when the emergency vehicles were regulated by city ordinance, which required trained personnel and emergency medical equipment on board their station wagons.

"Several of the ambulance operators at that time said they would just quit doing it if they had to follow those rules," said St. Joseph Fire Chief Mike Dalsing. "They were mainly mortuaries."

But the job was still in the hands of private companies, which made for fierce competition throughout St. Joseph. Before regulations, two major companies -- Ray and Larry's Ambulance Service and Metro Ambulance Service -- continued personal fights with one another, much like scenes straight from the Wild West.

As a police officer in 1964, Bill Minton remembers that with little regulation, the two were "capable of just about anything."

"They would actually race each other to the scene of accidents. There were guns drawn occasionally. One of the ambulances hit a friend of mine," he recalls, adding that often the drivers -- who had little more than Red Cross CPR training -- were seen at the local tavern before responding to emergencies.

There's tales of the two companies sending one another on fake calls, so the originating company could respond to the real emergency and collect the profit. In 1971, Metro Ambulance Service filed suit against Ray and Larry's, claiming their drivers fired shots at the Metro office building.

The wildness calmed after city officials passed a regulating ordinance, but in the early 1970s, Ray and Larry's Ambulance Service dropped out of the business. Soon after, Metro's license was suspended for not complying with the city's regulations.

Mayor William Bennett declared the situation an "emergency ambulance service problem."

Desperate for service, the city dropped emergency medical responsibility into the laps of the Fire Department, whose members also had little to no medical training. The city closed one fire station, putting those firefighters to work on the only ambulance in operation.

"The first few calls (the firefighters) went out on, they didn't have any medical equipment or anything," Mr. Dalsing said. "It was pretty haphazard."

A lengthy, controversial process began with city officials weighing ways to operate the service, which ultimately led Mayor Bennett to declare that the city was not equipped to, nor was it appropriate to, operate an ambulance service.

On Dec. 1, 1972, Sister's Hospital took over under a three-year contract, promising to provide paramedics to man the ambulances. The city paid a monthly stipend for upkeep of vehicles, but quit those payments in 1978 when it handed over complete control to the hospital.

The hospital in St. Joseph has had control of the ambulance service ever since, until 2014, when Heartland Paramedics Services will end and another entity -- which has yet to be determined -- will take over.

Fortunately, history won't be repeating itself, in that city and county officials have about 14 months to determine how to best implement an ambulance district in St. Joseph and two-thirds of Buchanan County.

Kim Norvell can be reached at kim.norvell@newspressnow.com. Follow her on Twitter: @SJNPNorvell.

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©2013 the St. Joseph News-Press (St. Joseph, Mo.)

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