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News release: Colorado - Denver/BoulderSeptember 18, 2003 For more information, call: Specially designed ambulance serves the extremely overweight Denver, CO – Kaiser Permanente and American Medical Response (AMR) have teamed up to provide a new and improved service for overweight patients needing emergency transport. The newly designed vehicle takes safety to new levels. The bariatric ambulance combines increased sensitivity with improved safety devices including a pulley system that attaches to gurneys, providing a mechanical lift into the ambulance. Paramedics find themselves responding to an increased number of calls involving patients who are extremely overweight. Often, several crews are needed to transport these bariatric patients. The retrofitted ambulance can safely transport someone who is 1,000 pounds. AMR is Kaiser Permanente’s contract ambulance service both locally and nationally. Each year, more than 35,000 patients are transported via ambulance in the Denver metro area. AMR is the nation’s largest private provider of medical transportation, responding to more than 4 million patients every year with a fleet of more than 4,000 vehicles. Kaiser Permanente, a non-profit organization and the largest private health care provider in Colorado, cares for more than 408,000 members in the Denver/Boulder and Colorado Springs areas. In the Denver/Boulder area, care is provided by a coordinated team of physicians, nurses, pharmacists, dietitians, mental health counselors and physical therapists. In Colorado Springs, Kaiser Permanente cares for its members through an affiliated network of community-based physicians and other health care providers.
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