About Medic 1 Ambulance

Community Emergency Service, Inc came into existence May 5, 1975; the cooperation was made up of both local and municipal leaders within Berrien County. Community Emergency Services, Inc at that time helped to provide local tax support dollars to Action Ambulance for two years and then later provided that same tax support to Rampart Ambulance, as Action Ambulance went out of business. Both of these services were in business at the time and were both private agencies struggling to make payroll and ends meet.

Community Emergency Service, Inc had a plan; instead of helping these struggling private services to provide service and still barley getting by. They decided to start a publicly municipally owned service. Medic 1 Ambulance was born out of this frustration of these local leaders with the then current ambulance services. Community Emergency Services, Inc established its DBA (doing Business As) Medic 1 Ambulance. Medic 1 Ambulance ran its first call on February 24, 1977 with a small handful of employee’s and two new ambulances covering ten cities and townships; Medic ran a total of 3,797 calls that first year.

In September of 1979, Medic 1 Ambulance rolled out it’s and the Counties very first ALS unit. During 1980 the very first full year of ALS Medic 1 Ambulance had received 5,550 calls for service and 370 of those calls received ALS intervention. By the mid 80’s Medic 1 Ambulance had gone to an all ALS system.

In March of 1994 Medic 1 Ambulance began providing wheelchair transportation service to the community, that first month of operation ninety transports were provided.

Our commitment to patient care is so strong we had set our goals to make Medic 1 Ambulance the very best, that goal was achieved on September 20, 2000 having earned National Accreditation, becoming only the 77^th agency to receive CAAS accreditation in the nation and was the 20^th in Michigan to become accredited at that time.  Having earned CAAS accreditation gives Medic 1 Ambulance the “Gold Standard” in ambulance service. Medic 1 Ambulance is still the only ambulance service within Berrien and Van Buren County’s to have achieved and maintained this “Gold Standard”.  (There are currently 102 CAAS-accredited agencies in 32 U.S. states and Nova Scotia, Canada)

Medic 1 Ambulance over it’s brief history has gone from only one station for ambulances covering a small handful of municipalities providing only basic life support, to what are now five stations with a fleet of vehicles covering twenty cities and townships within Berrien and Van Buren Counties with more than eighty employees providing Advanced Life Support with state of the art equipment, a wheelchair transport service, a full time Dispatch center and a full time Education Department.

Medic 1 Ambulance in its humble beginnings ran only those 3,797 to what is to date responding to more than an average of 29,000 requests for service.

Proudly Serving Berrien and part of Van Buren Counties.

A public nonprofit service accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Ambulance Services.

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Copyright © 2008 Medic 1 Ambulance; Community Emergency Service, Inc.
Last modified: 06/09/08