About Stevens County Sheriff's Ambulance

	The Stevens County Sheriff’s Ambulance began transporting the sick and injured of Northern Stevens County, parts of Eastern Ferry County and parts of North Western Pend Oreille County in 1973. Our coverage area includes over 1900 square miles. The key people in putting the service together were County Commissioners; Lee Strand, Orville (Clem) Clemmons and Ken Rosenberg, Sheriff Chan StClair, Sergeant Jerry Mugaas and Dr. Robert Goetter. The first EMT class was held in the winter of 1972/73. Our first year in business (1973) we were transporting 10 to 12 patients per month, we are now averaging 4 call outs per day (24 hours) or 1500 per year. Our first ambulance, a 1966 Cadillac was purchased in 1973 from Spokane Ambulance Co. for $18,898.00 in 2003 we purchased our newest state of the art ambulance a NorthStar built in Chehalis for $109,000.00! The first few years in business we depended on monies from the County tax payers to make ends meet, including our first ambulance building. In 1973 the Link family donated a piece of property including an old brick house across Birch Street from the Court House to the County for use of the new ambulance business. A carport was added to the brick house to house the ambulance “the shack”. Later the brick building was raised and a new building was built at that location to house the ambulances including a kitchen, bedroom, office and small training room. Team Rescue was formed in October of 1991 to perform extrication and special rescues in our ambulance coverage area and that of our neighboring ambulance companies’ coverage areas. Team Rescue has 12 volunteer members and some very nice rescue equipment. Stevens County Sheriff’s Ambulance is a fee for service ambulance transport service. We operate on the monies we collect for our services. Our vehicles, supplies, payroll, overhead expenses and our new facility are being paid from the revenues we collect for our transport services. We do not use tax based funds to operate the Stevens County Sheriff’s Ambulance Service. We are one of the least expensive BLS ambulance transport services in the State. We do not collect monies through an EMS levy or District. Our crewmembers are paid volunteers; they are paid for the ambulance runs they are involved in only. Crewmembers are not paid for on-call time or in-service training time (volunteer only). We currently have 40 EMTs and 2 full time paid administration staff members employed. We keep two crews of two EMTs on call at all times. We currently have 19 EMT-ILS (Intermediate Life Support) and 21 EMT-B (basic) on our ambulance staff. Current rolling stock/equipment includes: 4 fully stocked ambulances 1 backup ambulance 2 rescue/extrication vehicles SCSA is licensed and verified in Washington State as a Basic Life Support (BLS) ambulance transport agency. Although it is not required our crews always include two EMTs. We also carry a heart monitor, advanced airways, a pulse oximeter and other advanced equipment not required by a BLS service. Because our coverage area is so large we depend on First Response agencies in the out lying areas to medically stabilize patients until we arrive on scene with a transport vehicle.