Company Profile
Life E.M.S. provides compassionate, high quality ambulance service with personnel and regional support facilities covering over 4500 square miles in ten (10) Michigan Counties with areas that include the Greater Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Ottawa, Ionia, as well as Mason, Newaygo, Lake and Oceana Counties along with portions of Allegan and Van Buren Counties. Our local ownership and community-based staff of over 650 associates, enhances our ability to be highly responsive to our customer’s needs.
Operationally, Life E.M.S. maintains a fleet of more than eighty (80) licensed and fully equipped custom built ambulances and non-transport ALS/Integrated Care Paramedic response units. These units are equipped with the latest pre-hospital care equipment available (i.e. Life Pak 15 portable heart monitor/defibrillators with cardiac pacing utilizing pre-hospital 12 lead technology for early heart attack recognition/intervention, capnography, and pulse oximetry; transport ventilators, tablet computers and Stryker Power Load stretcher system for crew and patient safety). Deployment of our medic units is performed by our state-of-the-art paramedic and emergency medical dispatcher (EMD) staffed Control Center utilizing the latest in Computer Aided Dispatch (C.A.D.) technology and integrated, fully featured 911 secondary PSAP equipment.
Our Metro Chair/Mobility Division provides wheelchair transportation services throughout our service areas. A fleet of over fifty (50) specially equipped vans, mid-sized buses, and passenger vehicles, are utilized to safely provide access by the physically challenged as well as ambulatory patients to doctor appointments, nursing facilities, shopping, etc.
Life E.M.S. demonstrates a strong commitment to community involvement. This is evidenced by our long history of providing CPR classes, high school EMT classes, and Camp 911 summer day camps, led by our staff, as well as medical support for special events such as festivals and athletic contests. Life Ambulance is a designated American Heart Association (AHA) Community Training Center. In addition, the Life E.M.S. Education Centre provides a full range of educational opportunities including MFR, EMT, and fully accredited paramedic training, including innovative class formats such as our ten-week EMT academy.
Our philosophy at Life E.M.S. Ambulance has always been to provide the highest quality care with the lowest out-of-pocket cost. Hence, the best value for those we serve. The Life Care Plus Membership program extends this tradition by providing a way to fight rising health insurance co-payments and deductibles (the amount you pay).
Life Extra Care is a personal response system locally monitored by Life E.M.S. that helps provide a safer environment for elderly loved ones wishing to live independently.
We reflect back, as we enter our 42nd year of operation, on our humble beginnings in early 1980 with a run volume of zero calls (requests for ambulance service) per day. The equipment we started with consisted of three vehicles, all used, with initially just one fully equipped unit in service. Our dispatch center/business office consisted of a card table with a telephone and radio microphone resting on top. There was also a coffee maker nearby that sat atop some lumber and cement blocks acting as a table for our “reception” area.
We were able to survive these small beginnings through dedication, perseverance, and superior patient/customer satisfaction, which allowed us to grow through the numerous challenges faced by any new business as well as those many hurdles, political and otherwise, that are specific to the pre-hospital care environment. Along the way Life E.M.S. has proven itself by its performance to be worthy of a reputation as one of the highest quality and most progressive pre-hospital care services anywhere in the county including being routinely named one of the “Best and Brightest” places to work.
Today our state-of-the-art, ACE Accredited, Control Center is a “Center of Excellence” that features real time GPS predictive deployment, multiple back-up systems for safety and security and efficiently handles tens of thousands of requests for service each year. These requests for service occur throughout the Life E.M.S. Ambulance area of operations that include urban, suburban, and rural communities.
Life E.M.S. Ambulance has experienced a number of “firsts” over the years. These firsts range from our pioneering efforts in the design of the innovative safety concept vehicles to patient care product development with Stryker. Further examples of being in the forefront of pre-hospital care include the leadership roles, maintained by many members of the Life E.M.S. team, in local, state, and national business, healthcare, and community related organizations.
Commitment to the highest level of quality performance is something all Life E.M.S. Associates practice every day. This is demonstrated further by the fact that Life E.M.S. of Grand Rapids and Life E.M.S. of Kalamazoo were two of the first seventeen ambulance operations from across the country, and the first in west Michigan, to become fully accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Ambulance Services (CAAS). The comprehensive “gold standard” of quality upheld by the commission was developed in conjunction with such organizations as the National Association of EMS Physicians and the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP), which manages CAAS. Transparency through our sharing of performance data, with communities trusting us to serve them, is unmatched.
Any success we achieve is a result of the efforts of over six hundred fifty (650) plus associates employed throughout West Michigan that are unmatched in dedication and expertise to their healthcare delivery. This has allowed us to develop some innovative service delivery models incorporating partnerships with municipal, hospital, corporate and volunteer organizations. Tandem365 is a great example of the aforementioned community collaboration that has resulted in a unique coordinated care model to best serve the needs of the frail elderly in a respectful, high quality of life, environment.
In addition, Life E.M.S. is one of the seven owners/founders of Mobile Health Resources (MHR). MHR is an ambulance network established to provide statewide contracting capability for sophisticated medical transportation services to customers such as managed care, health systems or employer groups. MHR operates one of the largest, most respected national patient satisfaction survey programs for ambulance providers, through EMS Survey Team.
Life E.M.S. is committed to continue this tradition of being in the forefront of innovation in our field. This, combined with our mission of providing compassionate, cost-effective care, provides the best service possible to the communities we serve.
