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HISTORY

In 1958, the American Legion Post 82 purchased an ambulance from Millville Hospital to transport legion members to and from area VA Hospitals. They housed the vehicle in a garage behind the American Legion Hall. Soon after the purchase of this ambulance, the American Legion began getting an overwhelming request for their service from within the community.

In December, 1958, through the leadership of Harry Risley, the American Legion formed a new entity and incorporated it as the American Legion Rescue Squad. The services were no longer limited to Legion members. By mid 1959, the American Legion Rescue Squad was taking all ambulance calls in Millville.

In the early years, the service was basically a "swoop and scoop". The development of any lifesaving techniques in the field had not evolved and the primary objective was to get the patient to a hospital quickly.

In the 1960's, emergency care was beginning to be rendered in the field. A major breakthrough was the development of a new technique referred to as Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation (CPR). In 1962 several Legion members went to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore to learn this newly developed technique. This was one of the first aspects of emergency care administered to patients in the field.

A landmark report called "Accidental Death and Disability on the American Highways: The neglected disease of modern society" was published in 1966 by The National Academy of Sciences. This document laid the groundwork for the inclusion of EMS in the Highway Safety Act of 1966. this act gave birth to Emergency Medical Services through a series of standards and regulation.

By 1980, the increasing volume of emergency requests had escalated to the point where the Rescue Squad had no choice but to discontinue providing routine transports between local hospitals and patients' homes.

In 1988, the Rescue Squad and American Legion Post 82 mutually agreed to separate. As the Squad had grown beyond its original intended purpose of providing non-emergency transports, so did the liability. In October of 1988, the separation became official and the organization became known as the Millville Rescue Squad.

Through the 1980's and 1990's, Millville Rescue Squad experienced the same problems that were occurring nationwide with volunteer rescue squads. Factors such as the economy, increases in training requirements and the increased risk of communicable disease were having a negative impact on volunteerism within our industry. By the mid 1990's, Millville Rescue Squad was experiencing delayed responses to emergency calls.

In 1995, the volunteer membership voted to restructure the Board of Directors and amend the by-laws to allow paid members. In October of that year the newly restructured Board of Directors met for the first time. In November, the first full time employee, an Executive Director, was hired.

On January 16, 1996, the Millville Rescue Squad received licensure by the New Jersey Department of Health to begin providing Emergency Medical Services with a combination of paid and volunteer staffing. Six additional paid members were hired and from that day forward, Millville Rescue Squad has responded to 100% of the emergency requests. Since the inception of paid staffing, our goal has been to exceed the standards of "high performance" EMS systems. The expectation is to make patient contact in 8 minutes or less from the time 911 is activated. In a high performance system, this time standard should be achieved 90% of the time. For every consecutive year since our restructure, Millville Rescue Squad has consistently achieved a 93-94% fractal response time.

There is, however, a down side to all of these positive changes. Keeping a system like this afloat costs substantial dollars. Traditionally an EMS system requires substantial amounts of taxpayer subsidy to offset the increased expenses. Millville Rescue Squad began to explore other sources of funding without burdening the taxpayer base. The result of this project was expansion of our service line. The decision to become a comprehensive medical transportation service was made in an effort to secure our existence and solvency.

The official expansion of our service began on June 15, 1998 when Millville Rescue Squad entered a contractual agreement with South Jersey Hospital System, to provide ambulance and wheelchair van transportation for their four facilities; Newcomb, Elmer, Bridgeton and Millville Hospitals. this expansion resulted in the hiring of over 40 employees.

Shortly after our expansion, the request for our service began to grow beyond our expectation. This pattern of growth has continued for nearly two consecutive years and continues today. Our services have extended to nursing homes, dialysis centers, physicians offices and outpatient services.

Prior to our expanded services, Millville Rescue Squad was transporting 2800 patients per year. We now exceed 28,000 patients per year. This growth has resulted in our current staffing of over 100 employees and over $2,000,000 annual payroll. We now own and operate 30 vehicles. Our projected operating budget is $4,000,000.

Yet, we continue to explore new services. The most recent service we have added is our Critical Care Transport Unit. We met the necessary requirements for this new service in January 2000 and hired our first registered nurse as Project Director shortly thereafter. We began the process of hiring and orientation of registered nurses for this program and started the new service in April, 2000. Our Critical Care Transport Team will provide highly skilled personnel to accompany critically ill and compromised patients during transport. Each team consists of an experienced Critical Care Nurse with additional training in transport medicine and a Certified Emergency Medical Technician. This team will remain flexible and sensitive to the diverse needs of both the adult and pediatric patients they serve. This new critical care transport program resulted in the hiring of over 10 registered nurses.

Our increased staffing and equipment has served as an enhancement to the 911 services we provide. Recent statistics have shown that our transport service is used to respond to 911 calls several times per shift.

It is important to know, as Millville Rescue Squad has continued to grow and expand our services, we have not lost focus of our primary mission of providing emergency services to the City of Millville. This will always remain as our priority.