About this episode
Hossein Mokhtari, who founded Essential Health Transport in Los Angeles with his wife during the pandemic, now runs about seven vans doing roughly 10 trips each per day across the San Fernando Valley. He won facilities by taking the work others refused, including bariatric patients and pickups starting at 2 in the morning, and every van is outfitted to multi-load ambulatory, wheelchair, and gurney riders simultaneously. About 70 percent of the schedule is standing orders and 30 percent same-day influx, half the 15 to 16 person team are EMTs, and he has narrowed every facility in the valley down to roughly two dozen partners.
Key takeaways
- Essential Health Transport launched during the pandemic with Mokhtari, his wife, and one employee, drawing on her 11 years of hospital case management to read what facilities actually needed.
- Bariatric trips opened doors. Mokhtari says most competitors will not touch them, his heaviest was roughly 650, and his vans are built to multi-load different levels of patient together.
- Vans start as early as 2:30 in the morning and run into the evening, averaging about 10 trips each, with dialysis riders seen three or four times a week anchoring the schedule.
- Roughly half the team are EMTs even though Los Angeles dropped that requirement around 2022. Mokhtari keeps them for gurney and bariatric work and has a field training officer standardizing procedure.
- The five year plan is a 10 van fleet in each of three counties, adding Ventura and Orange, plus a BLS ambulance license now waiting on a hearing with EMS.
Chapters
- 0:00 Forget same-day trips
- we do "same-hour" trips.
- 0:46 Starting Essential Health Transport during the pandemic.
- 2:14 The "Human Element": Treating patients like family.
- 4:22 The "Men in Black" branding and professional culture.
- 6:42 How to acquire private pay patients and insurance partnerships.
- 8:59 Winning facilities by taking the "hard" rides (Bariatric & odd hours).
- 12:52 Scaling the fleet: Capacity and multi-loading.
- 15:42 Building a leadership team (Fleet Manager, FTO, and Marketing).
- 17:25 Why we still use EMTs for NEMT services.
- 20:10 The 5-Year Plan: Expansion to Ventura and Orange County.
- 22:30 Transitioning to Bambi software while on vacation in Hawaii.
- 26:55 Handling emergencies on the fly with real-time analytics.
