How Advantage Ambulance Became Their Own Broker, Increasing Revenue By 20%

Featured Customer Interview: Advantage Ambulance

Company Size: 225 employees

Year Established: 2000

How long has been using VectorCare: 2 years

Services offered: BLS, ALS, CCT, NICU, Bariatric Care, and more.

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Founded in 2000, ADVANTAGE AMBULANCE provides comprehensive non-emergency medical transport to hospitals, SNF’s, and other customers in Southern California.

Tom Clowdus, Vice President, played a crucial role in Advantage's growth the past couple years as the company used VectorCare to transform antiquated healthcare practices (such as a reliance on the phone and fax machine), into a new business model which increased their customer retention rate, service offering, and revenue.

Before using the platform, Advantage relied on the phone to schedule rides for their customers. Facilities, SNF’s, and hospice companies would call their comms center to schedule a ride, often being put on hold depending on call volume. It would frequently take a client up at 40 minutes to schedule a single transport for a patient.

With VectorCare’s tools, Advantage has been able to shrink that scheduling time to just 3 minutes. Requesters simply type out the service request, and instantly broadcast the request to Advantage's comms center through the platform. The process has dramatically reduced time on task for Mission’s customers.

“Some facilities have to go through phone call, after phone call, after phone call to get transportation for a particular patient. They might be on the phone for 45 minutes and would have no record of who actually did the transport. Now, it’s all in the system at a glance….It’s been a growing curve for some facilities and providers, but once they’re onboard, it’s so efficient and effective. “

On the business side, Advantage has been able to partner with other local service providers to capture more contracts than ever before. A couple years ago, Advantage offered only ambulance transports. By connecting with a network of local back-up providers in various fields, Advantage has been able to offer wheelchair, gurney van, sedan car services, and more without having to “own” those services in-house and break the bank doing so. If Advantage received a wheelchair request that they can’t fulfill, they simply broadcast the request to their network of wheelchair providers.

Clowdus explains, “VectorCare has really helped us achieve our objectives of bringing on new clientele, because we can say “at the click of a button, we can offer any mode of transportation”, rather than being limited to ambulance transportation only.”

“VectorCare has really helped us achieve our objectives of bringing on new clientele, because we can say “at the click of a button, we can offer any mode of transportation”, rather than being limited to ambulance transportation only.”

As a final differentiator with their clients, Advantage can instantly collect data and reports on all their client operations. Advantage now shares important data insights with customers: how many transports they have in a given month, their service levels, site capacities based on time of day, and more. By granting customers and easy, more efficient, and more beneficial way of ordering transport, Advantage has been able to position itself as a leader in the industry and captured far more of the local market than they would’ve otherwise. Clowdus estimates that using VectorCare has increased Advantage total business volume by a staggering 15-20%. And once customers begin using this new way of ordering transports, they don’t want to leave for other competitors.

As a final thought, we asked Tom if he believed the initial investment in VectorCare was worth it for Advantage:

"Once you get introduced to something that’s quicker, faster, and more efficient, and you’re open to the small learning curve– it’s amazing. VectorCare has helped us grow our account base which in turn had led to revenue and income for our company."

“Absolutely. Once you get introduced to something that’s quicker, faster, and more efficient, and you’re open to the small learning curve– it’s amazing. VectorCare has helped us grow our account base which in turn had led to revenue and income for our company. “