PROVIDING SHUTTLE SERVICES FOR THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS AT THE BIRMINGHAM VA MEDICAL CENTER
Charter Linkz was excited to plan and provide chartered shuttle transportation services for patients and healthcare workers at the Birmingham VA Medical Center. It was an absolute honor for our team to serve veterans and their families by ensuring safe, reliable, and competitively priced transportation services that adhered to full COVID-19 protocols each and every day.
Joseph Jacovino
Managing Partner Charter Linkz
Overview
The Veterans Health Administration (VHA)—part of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs —is the largest integrated health care system in the United States. The VHA provides care at 1,298 health care facilities. These include 171 VA Medical Centers and 1,113 outpatient sites of care with varying complexity to over 9 million veterans enrolled in the VA health care program.
In many areas of the country, several VA medical centers, clinics, and annexes work together to offer services to area veterans in an effort to provide more efficient care. By doing so, the VHA can provide veterans with easier access to advanced medical care.
One hospital, the Birmingham VA Medical Center in Alabama, provides primary and specialty health care services to over 71,000 veterans every year in Alabama and surrounding states. The medical center also works closely with the Birmingham VA Clinic Annex to provide top-notch outpatient specialty health needs including mental health, optometry, and laboratory services.
The medical center and its clinic annex are located approximately one mile apart in the historic Southside District of Birmingham—not too far from the University of Alabama.
Challenge
With the COVID-19 pandemic underway, the Birmingham VA Medical Center was extremely busy. The medical center needed to find more resources to safely, reliably, and efficiently transport veterans, families, visitors, and healthcare workers between the Birmingham VA Medical Center and the Birmingham VA Clinic Annex.
To find the perfect charter bus service that could handle this demanding responsibility while meeting stringent COVID-19, health, and safety requirements, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs issued a federal request for proposal (RFP) to national ground transportation services.
Charter Linkz, a premier ground transportation service with headquarters in New York/New Jersey, responded to the RFP. Joseph Jacovino, Managing Partner and President of Sales at Charter Linkz, said, “With our 25 years of experience, we really wanted to provide these critical transportation services to veterans and their families. Given that we are a registered government provider for disaster recovery and emergency transportation services, we knew that we could meet all requirements and provide safe, reliable transportation, especially during COVID.”
Solution
Charter Linkz was awarded the federal contract (Purchase Order: 36C24720P1337) from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Central Alabama Veterans Health Care on September 25, 2020. The official start date was set for a week later on October 1, 2020. The contract, valued at $2,047.455, would extend through May 13, 2022.
Jacovino said, “As a nationwide leader in ground transportation and logistics, we immediately sprang into action.” He further added, “Our team was absolutely committed to providing safe, reliable, and competitively priced services for the Birmingham VA Medical Center.” Accordingly, Charter Linkz provided all equipment (including personal protective gear), supplies, supervision, personnel, and transportation. All was done in full compliance to ensure that all services were delivered in accordance with the contract as well as all applicable Veterans Affairs laws and regulations.
They supplied 10 buses with a capacity for 24 passengers in each. These included wheelchair lifts and 10 professional commercial driver license (CDL) operators with passenger endorsement. The buses ran 5 days per week (Monday through Friday) to drive, assist passengers, and service the assigned vehicles. Hours were 6:00 AM to 8:00 PM and excluded federal holidays.
During the contract, Charter Linkz personnel consistently maintained on- time scheduled pick-up of passengers between locations (in both directions) that occurred every 5 to 15 minutes depending on the time of day.
They strictly adhered to all established COVID-19 protocols and utilized cutting-edge sanitization methods every single day. Moreover, Charter Linkz followed all regularly updated regulations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the government as it related to the COVID- 19 crisis.
Charter Linkz is a national bus charter rental company based out of New York/New Jersey. We have been providing premier ground transportation services for decades (and counting) and pride ourselves in being able to make traveling and event-planning easy for our customers that include corporations, non-profits, schools, and government agencies (federal, state, and local). Charter Linkz is also a registered government provider for disaster recovery and emergency services transportation. We work with FEMA and the federal government to bring first responders directly to the source.
