The Evolution of MEDIC, Charlotte, N.C.'s High-Performing EMS Agency

Construction workers recently put the finishing touches on Medic’s new $48 million headquarters, a state-of-the-art facility that supports 600 employees, as well as an ever-expanding fleet of trucks, equipment and medical supplies. Although the new headquarters is impressive, it really stands as a symbol of the hard work achieved by the organization’s people over the last two decades, says Joe Penner, executive director of Medic, whose teams serve all 544 square miles of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, including the booming city of Charlotte. Only after dedicating the entire organization to a patient-centered system of care and a culture of improvement did Medic establish itself as a premiere EMS organization—and one worthy of its new home. For anyone who knows the history of the area’s EMS struggles, it may be hard to believe how far they’ve come. Rewind 20 years: In the mid-1990s, the Mecklenburg County EMS system was failing in a very public way. Newspaper headlines reported long response times, firefighters complained about waiting on scene for ambulances to arrive, and residents—particularly those on the outskirts of the county—were noticing the poor service. The system suffered from an aging infrastructure and had been ignored and underfunded for years. Political battles further complicated things, with the Charlotte Fire Department and two different hospital systems vying to take control of the county’s third-service EMS agency. The situation in Cha...
Source: JEMS Special Topics - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: Exclusive Articles Administration and Leadership Source Type: news