I'm pretty sure that with our second child my wife told the hospital to get the epidural ready before she told the hospital that she was having contractions.
I had done a meeting with a doula just to check it out and they had a pain management scale type thing - basically to see where you fell on it. 1 out of a 10 was "I want an epidural before I get to the hospital." Sounds like that's where your wife would fall!