Ariola and Kristoff discuss ambulance fleet capacity and revenue
Ariola asks about ambulance fleet size and out-of-service rates. Kristoff reports about 600 ambulances with 30% out of service at any time, average age two years, with replacements targeted at 5-6 years. Ariola asks if more ambulances would increase revenue; Kristoff says call volume would limit the impact.
Okay, so I'm gonna switch to fleet capacity.
What is the current size of the FDNY ambulance fleet and how many units are out of service at any given time due to maintenance or age and what is the average?
Age of the fleet.
So there are about 600 ambulances in the field.
The number is a little bit higher than that if you include specialty ambulances and ambulances used in training.
The average out of service is about 30%, but our number of ambulances reflects the fact that we need that level of spares available.
The average age is about two years.
So we aim to replace our ambulances when they're five to six years old.
And so they're fairly young.
And is that done regularly?
Yes, there was a delay around the pandemic because of manufacturing delays, but we have since caught up.
Okay, and if the FDMY increased the number of active ambulances, would transport revenue increase proportionally, or are there just other constraints such as staffing or coal volume that would limit that impact?
So call volume would definitely limit the impact.
So we think that the demand side of that equation is fairly constant.
The number of people calling 911 for a medical emergency isn't likely to change if we have more or fewer ambulances.
How we estimate the revenue impact of adding a tour depends a little bit on the situation.
So in instances where we're replacing a tour that was operated by a voluntary hospital, which has certainly happened many times over the last few years.
We can estimate the full revenue impact of that because basically supply is staying the same.
We're just replacing who is operating that tour.
If we were adding tours to the system to improve response time, say, the revenue impact would be less.
There would still be one, but it would sort of redistribute where those patients are going.
We're only two-thirds of the system.
The other one-third is the voluntary hospitals.
So if we were adding additional tours to increase the total number, we would anticipate that we would proportionally pick up more tours.