Gold Cross isn't hurting

When Gold Cross lost its contract to provide 911 ambulance service within Salt Lake City limits, its volume dropped about 20 percent to 25 percent.

For some reason, though, so did its "canceled" rate — the calls in which someone decides not to take the ambulance — from 26 percent to 19 percent.

So, despite the loss of the contract, business is booming.

Several months after the city's emergency services contract was awarded to Southwest Ambulance (which has a four-year contract that can be renewed up to a total of 12 years before a new contract must be signed), Gold Cross still takes about 110 calls a day, including calls from facilities and directly from residents, paratransit calls and calls from dispatch in unincorporated Salt Lake County, where it does hold the 911 contract.

The company's focus has changed surprisingly little with the loss of the long-held contract, said Mike Moffitt, senior vice president, who grew up in the business his father founded nearly 40 years ago. It holds the contracts for 911 calls in Uintah County, as well. And it provides transport between facilities in Juab and Utah counties. All the dispatchers are trained and certified, just like 911 dispatchers, for medical calls.

Gold Cross recently received a Homeland Security grant with which it purchased a community-emergency response vehicle. It's a large trailer that can be hauled to the scene of any mass casualty or emergency, said community relations director Chris DeLaMare.

The trailer is stocked with supplies to augment what's carried on firetrucks and ambulances: 30 jump kits, a portable generator and lighting, back boards, C-collars and more. DeLaMare said it can handle as many as 50 to 100 casualties at a time.

It's also a multifunctional unit, with a separate room that can serve as a first aid station, complete with space for a couple cots, which makes it handy for large social or sporting events.

It had its first run during the Wasatch Junior High School fire, where it was used as a recovery area for the embattled and exhausted firefighters.

The company has about 320 medical team members on staff, including both full- and part-timers; 185 of them are in Salt Lake County alone, where Gold Cross has 50 ambulances. Statewide, the company has a 65-ambulance fleet, some of them bariatric units to transport heavier patients.