McCormick awarded Santa Monica

wtferick

Forum Captain
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First off, Congrats.

Did AmeriCare not meet standards?
 

Jim37F

Forum Deputy Chief
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I don't know anything more than what the headline states, but back in the day, I used to work for Gerber Ambulance before they went out of business. Gerber USED to have Santa Monica (and Torrance) and lost SM to AmeriCare, and when I was at Gerber all the "water cooler" talk kept saying that SM hated AmeriCare and that they wanted to renegotiate and we (Gerber) would pick it back up any time now. That could easily be chalked up to institutional pride and ego though, but even when I left Gerber I heard some of the same rumors floating around every once in a while.

Obviously that never came to pass, but when Gerber went out of business and McCormick picked up the Torrance contract, I did hear some of the same water cooler gossip saying SM may look at switching to McCormick (this was like 3ish years ago now I think?) Of course I eventually ended up working for McCormick and there was still some faint rumors about possibly bidding on Santa Monica, or at least management would be interested in expanding there, but nothing like serious or concrete. Then we had like a month or two warning before we picked up Compton and we were working on settling into that contract by the time I left 4-5 months ago now and no one was really talking about Santa Monica....until I saw that on McCormick's facebook today lol.

So...a bit out of the blue, but not entirely surprising given the ever so faint background rumors that refused to die over the last 3-4 years haha. I'm sure there's someone else with more inside scoop on AmeriCare's relation with Santa Monica and why they switched over to McCormick (other than the obvious, McCormick is a better company :p but seriously, McCormick is kind of an oddity for LA/OC private companies, being that they're really the only ones company wide dedicated to providing 911 support, vs everyone else, especially AmeriCare that is dedicated IFT with a few rigs reserved for a small 911 spot somewhere....although Care is like 50/50 and wouldn't be a bad choice either, though McCormick is in a much better spot geographically speaking since their existing contracts more or less surround Santa Monica and Care doesn't lol)
 

VentMonkey

Family Guy
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Lulz, the “back in the day” remark made me chuckle. Before Gerber had the contract AMR did. It looks like it’s come around full circle.

Wasn’t Americare absorbed by that scAmbulunz company? This isn’t surprising in the slightest.
 

ITBITB13

Forum Lieutenant
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The City of Santa Monica and EMS agency probably did not want certain Baby blue ambulances running around code-3 in the city.

Just sayin’. I too am not surprised. It was a matter of time.
 

BobBarker

Forum Lieutenant
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I had 1 of my old friends work as a EMT for AmeriCare and he said their personal relationship with the fire department wasn't bad and although there wasn't a policy that said the ambulance couldn't treat patients before FD got there, he said FD didn't really like that they weren't first on scene (no fault of AmeriCare's, just weird).
My other friend who used to be a dispatcher said that they would sometimes pull units from 911 to do IFT and in some cases, an ambulance would have to roll code 3 from Carson or another part of the county to backup/respond.
I'm not surprised they lost the contract

Oh. and don't even get me started on Ambulnz...
 
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