PVH ambulances vow to leave no bike behind

Injured cyclists can be reluctant to accept care if it means leaving their bikes at the scene of a crash in Northern Colorado.

Sensitive to the dilemma, Poudre Valley Hospital transports bikes with the injured pedestrians to the hospital. Fourteen of the hospital's ambulances are now equipped with bike racks on the front.

PVH does not track how many people have used the new ambulance service, but on average two to four bikes are transported on ambulances in Fort Collins each day, hospital spokesperson Kelly Tracer said.

Steve Main, PVH's director of emergency medical services, said loading up the bike with the patient is simply customer service.

"(The bike rack equipped ambulance) is eliminating some of the concerns that our patients had in the past when they were like, 'I'm not going to the hospital if I have to leave my bike here,'" Main said

"When you have a $3,000 or $4,000 bike, even though the wheel is out of round or the handle bars are bent you have real concerns about abandoning it on scene."

Before ambulances transported bikes with their riders, PVH EMS crews used to lock the bicycles up and leave them behind. A hospital staff member would sometimes swing by later to retrieve the bike for a patient.

PVH had to rethink that process when EMS teams began encountering injured riders more frequently.

"It was getting to the point where it was happening daily. Of course, there's seasonal fluctuations. In the summer, you get three or four (cyclist injuries) a day, and in the winter maybe one or two a day," Main said. "It was to the point where we had to address bicycle transportation in Fort Collins."

Fort Collins' bicycle-crash rate was 11.8 per 10,000 people in 2013, according to city data. Numbers for 2014 aren't yet available.

The hospital spent nearly $5,000, or $356 per 911 ambulance, on installing the bike racks.

Coloradoan reporter Adrian D. Garcia can be reached at 970-224-7835 or Twitter.com/adriandgarcia .