| Industry | Healthcare |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1948 |
| Headquarters | Scottsdale, Arizona |
| Products | Ambulance, Fire Protection, Security Services, Emergency Communications |
| Revenue | $500 million USD (2008) |
| Website | RuralMetro.com |
Rural/Metro Corporation is a for-profit emergency services organization — the second-largest in the country — providing emergency medical transportation, non-emergency general medical transportation to healthcare facilities and health management organizations, fire protection services, including community, airport, industrial and wildland specialties, and emergency training services to private and commercial enterprise throughout the United States. Currently Rural/Metro serves more than 400 communities nationwide.[1] Rural/Metro was founded and is still based in Scottsdale, Arizona. Rural/Metro employs over 8,000 people and answers 1.5 million calls for service yearly. Rural/Metro also owns Southwest Ambulance of Arizona.
Effective October of 2011, Warburg Pincus acquired Rural/Metro.[2]
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Founder Lou Witzeman, a newspaper reporter, witnessed a house fire near his home just outside the city limits of Phoenix, Arizona in 1948. There was no fire department established for the area. Witzeman felt something had to be done, went and purchased a fire engine and proceeded to go door to door asking residents to subscribe to the new fire service by paying an annual membership fee (in lieu of taxes).[1] This was the origin of the Rural Fire Department, later renamed Rural/Metro Fire Department.
In 1969, Rural/Metro began offering ambulance service to customers independent of the Fire Department. Through the years, Rural/Metro has stayed on the leading edge of EMS technologies, offering Advanced life support ambulances to communities in its public/private service model. Many communities are covered under a master contract in which Rural/Metro is selected as the sole provider for 911 ambulance services for a jurisdiction. Additionally, Rural/Metro offers other transport services in areas in which they are not the primary EMS provider. Rural/Metro currently offers ambulance services in 450 communities across 20 states. [3]
Today, Rural/Metro continues to offer private fire protection services to communities across the Unites States. The company has traditionally offered services in locations in which there are no other fire departments operating. Many of these locations contract directly with subscribers to collect fees. Rural/Metro Fire Department serves under a master contract in a handful of communities and receives operating funds directly from the community (tax based, yet privately provided).[4] Rural/Metro Fire Department provides services to non subscribers in these communities, billing the property owner after the incident to recoup costs associated with the mitigation of the emergency.[5]
In 1975 Rural/Metro contracted with Oro Valley to provide its police services, but the arrangement was challenged by the Arizona Law Enforcement Officers Advisory Council, which argued that under Arizona law an employee of a private firm could not be a police officer. Rural Metro, not wishing in incur the legal fees needed to fight the challenge, ended the arrangement in 1977. Nonetheless, during the time in which it operated, burglary rates in the 3.5-square-mile (9.1 km2) town dropped from 14 to 0.7 per month and stayed at that level.[6]