The city of New Ulm will have a new ambulance service starting Friday, it was announced Monday

The owners and operators of the new service are Mr. and Mrs. Randall Strand of 813 Second N. The ambulance service will be known as Allied Ambulance, and it will be the only service in the city as of Nov.1.

The Strands absorbed the ambulance service run by Gedstad-Hines Funeral Home in New Ulm, including the purchase of the ambulance. Mr. and Mrs. Strand also are negotiating with Eugene Martinka owner of Martinka Ambulance, for the purchase of some of his equipment.

Both Martinka and Warren Hardy of the Gedstad-Hines service will terminate ambulance service Thursday. The Strands will then operate the ambulance service on a full-time basis with the ambulance they bought from Hardy, and two they already owned. This will give them two emergency vehicles and one transfer vehicle.

The Strands came along at the right time for New Ulm. Both Martinka and Hardy had expressed an interest in getting out of the ambulance business. In fact,the two met with city manager Richard Salvati earlier this month in hopes of finding someone to take over the service for the entire city.

Randall Strand is a native of the Mankato area, and attended Mankato State College for a time. His wife, the former Charlotte Acker, is a native of New Ulm and a 1970 graduate of New Ulm High School.

The two moved four years ago to southern California where Mrs. Strand attended the University of Southern California, majoring in psychology, and he did paramedical work and teaching.

While in California, Strand took Emergency Medical Technician training, an 81-hour course, as well as 180 hours of specialized training and a teaching course. Strand is a paramedic, with a license to teach EMT courses which are expected to be mandatory in the state of Minnesota for ambulance attendants within the next two years.

Mrs. Strand has had nurse’s training and advanced First Aid, and both have practical experience in ambulance work. Mrs. Strand said she came back to New Ulm to visit friends, and discovered the problems with the ambulance service here. She and her husband immediately looked into the situation because this is the type of work they had been looking for, she said.

The problems for Martinka and Hardy were those of both time and money. Both have other businesses which require their time, plus neither was making any money on the service.

Martinka indicated that his main reason for staying in the business as long as he has was because he enjoyed the work and liked to help people. Martinka has personally been involved in ambulance work since 1946.

Salvati brought the problem to the attention of the city council, which appointed a three-man committee of Salvati, Police Chief Richard Gulden,and Fire Chief L.E. Lowinske to study the problem. The committee met with the Strands last week. The Strands said at that time that all they wanted from the city was as agreement that there would be no competing ambulance services. The committee agreed.

Originally, the possibility of a city subsidy to the ambulance service was mentioned, but the Strands did not request any financial help from the city.

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PART OF THE financial problem of an ambulance service in New Ulm is the fact that the hospitals are private hospitals.

In Springfield, for example, the hospital and ambulance was purchased by the city and is maintained by city funds. Volunteers staff the ambulance on an on-call basis. The calls for ambulance service go to the hospital, and then are relayed to the individual on call. The hospital acts as collector for the service. Mrs. Dorothy Schmidt, hospital administrator, said there are very few problems with the system.

Harold Fenske, administrator at Union Hospital in New Ulm, said that he felt that all potential users of an ambulance service should contribute in some way. He said that a subsidy to a private ambulance service would accomplish this.

Fenske said that it would not be feasible for either of the hospitals in New Ulm to run an ambulance service, because of the personnel that would be needed and because the cost of the service would be passed along only to those who were sick. He said the only way for a private hospital to pay for additional services is by raising rates.

Fenske also mentioned possible new requirements in the state of Minnesota for ambulance drivers and attendants. The 81-hour EMT course will eventually be a requirement, as well as additional equipment in the ambulance.

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A PARALLEL situation is regard to ambulance service problems in New Ulm is the present situation in Mankato. The lone ambulance service there is a privately-owned service,Kost Ambulance Service, and the combined hospital corporation is also a private institution. Kent Garvin, manager of Kost Ambulance Service, said the service there is losing money. He said the service opened its books to the city council recently in order to justify a requested subsidy from the city of Mankato. The subsidy was turned down. Garvin said he was disappointed at the city’s decision, because presently the ambulance service is being supported financially by other businesses in the corporation, including a wrecker service and an auto repair service. Garvin added that the subsidy would have gone toward upgrading equipment to a greater degree, and more manpower.

Kost Service covers a 30-mile radius in and around Mankato, including Blue Earth County and parts of Nicollet and Le Sueur counties. Garvin said 75 per cent of his employees have already taken the EMT course, and most are graduates or students of the Mankato State College accredited paramedical program. Thus he has no personnel problem. Kost Service has four ambulances, with an average of five calls a day.

Garvin said one of his biggest problems was collection. He said the service was now at about 63 per cent collection.

Kost is considered one of the top 10 ambulance services in the state.