A Topeka company will begin charging some overweight and critical care patients more to ride in its ambulances.

The Shawnee County Commission on Monday agreed to allow American Medical Response to raise ambulance costs, from $629 to $1,172, for critical care patients and overweight people, whose transport requires special equipment and extra manpower.

AMR director Ken Keller says the company needed to increase its charges for overweight patients to cover costs including extra large and reinforced cots and a winch to help technicians load the patients into the ambulance. He says, in general, the company will charge more for those weighing over 350 pounds.

No such changes are foreseen in Lawrence. Mark Bradford, chief of Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical, said the agency’s ambulance bills are figured only on the type of call, including severity of the patient’s injuries.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with gender, race, weight, any of those types of things at all,” Bradford said.