When you think of the typical day in the life of a paramedic, you probably envision responding to the scene of a car accident or racing to save the life of someone who’s having a heart attack.
That wasn’t exactly the reality for Joey Rodriguez.
“The majority of what we were doing was non-emergency transportation,” said Rodriguez, who began working in EMS in 2015 after serving eight years in the Air Force. “We would pick people up, take them to the hospital and then bring them back home or we’d transport them from hospital to hospital. That’s usually what it was.”
During these trips, Rodriguez often heard people complain about how expensive ambulance rides were and when Covid hit, things quickly started to get even worse.
“We noticed that people’s bank accounts were really getting depleted because anything that seemed like it could be Covid was getting sent to the hospital,” he said. “Then it would come back as maybe a UTI and the person would be sent home in an ambulance and a lot of times insurance didn’t cover that. So these people are getting $3,000 bills just to get back home and they’d blame us even though we were just doing our job. But they had no other options for transportation.”
Then one day, things came to a head for Rodriguez. He had gotten a call to pick up a bedridden woman from the hospital and take her back to her nursing home and as he was en route, he got a 911 call and had to cancel the trip. Once he’d finished handling the emergency three hours later, he headed back to the hospital to get the woman and then just as he’d arrived – you guessed it – another 911 call came in that he had to respond to.
“We ended up picking her up 10 hours later,” Rodriguez said. “And she was heated because she was being charged for that extra time she spent in the hospital. I mean, they give you ibuprofen and it costs you $800.”
Frustrated with the situation, Rodriguez thought to himself “there has to be a better way.” He began doing some research on how to start a non-emergency medical transportation company and decided to give it a shot. After going through the certification process and purchasing a van and medical equipment, which took about eight months, he officially launched Rogers-based Stretcher Transportation Services in 2021. Now two years later, he sees his venture as the best of both worlds.
“I loved being a paramedic and helping people,” he said. “But I realized I could serve people better doing this business and I think I actually love this job more.”
The people who have discovered Stretcher Transportation Services – often through referrals from the dispatchers he worked with as a paramedic – are beyond thankful for the services he provides.
“They say ‘thank God we found you,’ or ‘I wish I would have known about you a month ago,’” he said. “They’ll tell us they wouldn’t know what to do if they didn’t find our company.”
So what are the three main reasons why using a non-emergency medical transportation company makes sense? Below, Rodriguez breaks it down:
- It’s much, much more cost effective: Using a company like Stretcher Transportation Services is a lot more affordable than calling an ambulance, which is essentially the most expensive form of transportation there is. In fact, Rodriguez said, a traditional eight-mile return home with an ambulance can cost up to $3,100. With his company, that transport will only cost around $300-$350. And when you consider that the individual who needs transportation probably has a lot of other medical expenses as well, the more places you can save money, the better.
- The logistics are a lot less stressful: Thanks to the proliferation of ridesharing services like Uber and Lyft, it’s easier than ever for people to get around without owning a car. However, if you have a medical condition that requires you be transported on a stretcher in a specialized vehicle, your options become very limited. From his experience in EMS and his conversations with dispatchers, Rodriguez knows many people who have had to rely on emergency transportation just to see their physician. “They would call 911 and say ‘my husband needs to go to the doctor. How can I schedule an appointment?’ and the dispatcher would tell them, ‘ we don’t do scheduled appointments,’” he said. When people contact Stretcher Transportation Services, they can schedule pickups and dropoffs so they know exactly how they’ll get to and from their appointments and they won’t have to wait around for hours for their ride to show up. Ideally, Rodriguez noted, by helping people access preventative care and resolve their health issues before they become catastrophic, they’ll be able to stay out of the emergency room where costs can add up fast.
- You get more personalized interactions: When you call 911, the paramedics who pick you up are very likely to be among the most compassionate people you’ll ever meet. That said, they’re also incredibly busy and there simply isn’t time to make a meaningful connection. Because Rodriguez will often see the same people over and over again when he picks them up for routine physical therapy or dialysis appointments, he’s able to establish more personalized relationships with them and their families. He remembers working with a client who had had a stroke and could barely move when he first started driving him to physical therapy. Then, two months later, that person was able to sit up in a wheelchair, nod his head and smile and eventually longer needed Rodriguez’s services. Another time, he got a call to take a man to his hospice home and after he picked the man up, one of his children asked Rodriguez if they could drive around the city on the way so he could get one last look at his hometown. “I said ‘no problem,’” Rodriguez recalled. “I drove him around the golf course where he used to play and we went by his old house and rode through his neighborhood. That’s something that won’t happen when you’re in an ambulance.”
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