The Aroostook Medical Center’s Crown Ambulance is now running a station in the town of Washburn, in a partnership with the neighboring town of Wade.
Crown Ambulance kicked off the start of the service with a ribbon cutting May 22, at the ambulance’s station in Washburn, at a garage and facility space leased from the town of Wade.
While Crown Ambulance has long served Washburn and Wade and 16 other communities, the move is aimed at bringing emergency health services closer to several rural communities, as Crown is no longer the primary provider of ambulance services in Presque Isle.
Presque Isle began its municipally run ambulance service in April, and Crown Ambulance was able to redirect some of its crews to other areas, said Daryl Boucher, TAMC’s director of patient care services.
“With the restructuring that’s occurred over the last several months, it gave us an opportunity to reallocate crews,” Boucher said. “We’ve placed our former Presque Isle crew here at this base. It’s going to improve response time significantly. It let’s us be in the community 24/7.”
The station in Washburn is Crown’s fifth, joining stations in Fort Fairfield, Limestone, Mars Hill and Presque Isle.
While TAMC officials tried to dissuade the city of Presque Isle from starting the municipal ambulance service during meetings last summer, the transition has gone well so far, said TAMC president Greg LaFrancois.
“It’s gone very smoothly,” LaFrancois said. “We are on their quality committee, so we get to make sure that the services are the right quality, and they are.”
Presque Isle starting its own service allows Crown Ambulance to have a greater presence in areas such as Washburn and Wade, LaFrancois added.
“They gave us an opportunity to start pushing these services out to more rural communities, which is where we ought to be.”
