COUNTYWIDE : Paramedic Provider Adds 3 Mobile Units

Pruner Health Services, a private company contracted by Ventura County to provide ambulance service to the east county, has added three mobile paramedic units, a company spokesman said.

The vehicles contain life-support equipment, such as fibrillation units and cardiac monitors, and are available 24 hours a day, said Doug Greenfield, Pruner’s director of support services.

The company has ambulance stations in Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, Camarillo and just outside Moorpark.

Pruner’s Chief Administrative Officer Steve Murphy said growth within the company’s service area does not warrant a fifth ambulance station, but the mobile units will handle an increase in demand.

The units provide “more treatment on the scene without tying up a whole ambulance station,” Murphy said.

Pruner, which serves about 330,000 people and an area of about 430 square miles, is not subsidized by tax revenue, but operates on user fees, Greenfield said.

One of the new vehicles is a four-wheel-drive unit that can be used on rough terrain, he said.

Greenfield said that the company’s goal is to send paramedics wherever and whenever they are needed and that the support vehicles were the most efficient and cost-effective way of doing that.