Acquiring an ambulance service in Puerto Morelos is a work in progress. In the early evening of Tuesday February 12th we met with Catarina Brown who is the Chairperson of the local Charity “El Mundo Para Puerto Morelos” and Antonio Auila Morenoa who is a private ambulance operator from Cancun. The purpose of our meeting was to begin the initial steps in setting up an ambulance service in Puerto Morelos.
Mr. Auila Morenoa is one of five private ambulance operators in the city of Cancun; his ambulances operate under the name of “Critical Mobile”. He is wanting to expand his business so has taken the liberty to place an ambulance in Puerto Morelos on a temporary basis to see if the call volume warrants an ambulance to be stationed here. I understand his ambulance will be here for trial period which began in January 2008. During our meeting he told us in the days the ambulance had been in Puerto Morelos they had responded to 25 calls. He feels this is a strong indication there is a need for an ambulance to be located here but there is one major problem for his company - of the 25 calls 24 of the patients could not afford to pay for his services. In Mexico if one works for an employer s/he may have medical insurance at the hospital but no coverage for ambulance transportation to the hospital. If one is self employed or not employed s/he has no health coverage unless they pay for it privately – very few can afford it. I understand there is no health care coverage which includes ambulance transportation to a hospital or health care facility in this country.
The city of Cancun has a high call volume and because of its higher standard of living, vacationers and more residents can afford to pay for the cost of their ambulance usage. The short distance to the hospital and payment for services received, helps the operators to off set the cost of those calls to people in the city that can not afford to pay. Puerto Morelos does not offer that same option to the ambulance operator because of the greater distance to the Cancun hospitals, and the majority of people living in this area can not afford to pay for their own personal ambulance usage.
The wages are very low here – a construction worker may get paid as much as 80 Pesos per day or $8:00 US; the basic cost for an ambulance is 3,000. Pesos or $300.00 US, then there is an equipment charge – for every item of equipment used on a patient while in the care of the ambulance service there is an additional charge. For example: oxygen + blood pressure instruments + neck brace + back board + and so on equals (=) the total cost to the patient in Pesos or US Dollars.
Gerando Martinez has been the onsite paramedic here in Puerto Morelos since we came; he has been on site since Mr. Auila Morenoa placed the ambulance in the community about a month ago. By onsite I mean that he has been with the ambulance 24 hours of each of those days. The ambulance has often been parked at the Health Clinic (Centor De Salud Puerto Morelos); there are sleeping facilities inside the Health Clinic but Doctors and Nurses coming into the community get first dibs on these leaving Gerando no other choice but to sleep in his ambulance, this he has done for many of his nights here. “Welcome to my home!” he says when we stop by for a visit.
When a call is received Gerando and one of the two volunteers from the community are notified by cell phone from the dispatch centre. The volunteer knows the community so if the ambulance is not close by he goes to the scene and Gerando meets him there with the Ambulance. The volunteer which is a Doctor from the clinic or a gentleman from the Civil Protection Service and Gerando complete the call by taking the patient to a hospital in Cancun, and then they return to Puerto Morelos. The time to complete a call and return to Puerto Morelos takes about 1 hour and 20 minutes.
Mr. Auila Moreno may be submitting a letter of interest to the Charity; I anticipate the Board of Directors will be advertising for an RFP – (Request’s for Proposal) to any ambulance operators interested in placing a designated ambulance in Puerto Morelos.
The Charity Board of Directors has a major task set before it which will involve a lot of decision making and possibly more fund raising. They have met and conquered many challenges in the past so I am confident they will be successful in making the right decisions and doing what is best for future ambulance service in Puerto Morelos.
