Acadian Ambulance

Acadian was founded by Roland Dugas, Richard Zuschlag, and Rolland Buckner in response to funeral homes ceasing to provide ambulance services because of new, financially burdensome federal guidelines. They decided that it was time to create a private ambulance company and took their idea to the Lafayette Police Jury.

Without the needed funds to get started, they decided to hire former Vietnam War medics to staff their new company, and raise funds through membership subscriptions. On July 21, 1971, the Police Jury authorized Acadian Ambulance Service, Inc. to be the emergency provider for Lafayette Parish. To this day, Acadian uses membership drives to aid funding of the company.

When Acadian first started, they had just 2 ambulances and 8 medics. Roland Dugas was the first president. At 12:01 a.m. on September 1, 1971, when funeral homes ceased services, Acadian Ambulance Service went live with a membership of 8,400 households.

Over the next year, Acadian grew to a fleet of 8 ambulances, and moved into about 26,000 households. In 1972, Acadian expanded service into St. Mary and Vermilion Parishes. They soon put in a model dispatch system, of which other companies would follow.

In 1973, Acadian moved into Acadia, Jefferson Davis, St. Martin, and Terrebonne Parishes, along with the city of Eunice. Membership levels grew to 70,648. In 1974, Acadian built a new headquarters in Lafayette with a state of the art Emergency Medical Dispatch Center. The company now had 100 employees, including 75 EMTs as it moved into Evangeline and Iberia Parishes. By 1975, they had 33 ambulances, and 80,216 households covered.

In 1976, Acadian expanded their EMT training, formalizing it and fully certifying employees through the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians and the state of Louisiana. In 1979, membership reached 100,000 households. That year brought the expansion into Assumption Parish, and an expansion to their telemetry system, including transmissions of EKGs to hospital rooms from almost anywhere in the service area.

Over the past four decades, Acadian Ambulance continued to grow its service area by utilizing anti-competitive practices such as acquiring legal monopoly clauses or taking legal action to prevent competition in many of the parishes and counties that it serves. Acadian now encompasses the majority of parishes in Louisiana, 34 counties in Texas and two counties in Mississippi, and the Memphis and Nashville areas in Tennessee. The company also expanded into six distinct divisions, with patients, clients and customers around the globe.

Legal problems and lawsuits

On March 26, 1998, US Attorney Mike Skinner announced that Acadian Ambulance had agreed to pay the federal government $1.9 million to settle a lawsuit that charged the Lafayette company with overbilling the Medicare and Medicaid programs from 1990 to 1994 by offering a greater discount to members than allowed by law. The Company did not incur penalties and no finding of fraud was found..

Following her total left hip arthroplasty in June 2000, Gaye Cryar was being moved from her hospital bed to the stretcher of an Acadian Ambulance to transfer her to a rehabilitation hospital. The Acadian Ambulance crew dropped the patient, causing a re-injury and an acute fracture of the acetabulum and dislocation of the hip prosthesis. Acadian won summary judgement in the trial court but the Louisiana Court of Appeals, Third Circuit, reversed the summary judgment on May 31, 2006, saying, "[the] increasing complaints after the patient reported a rough transfer from bed to stretcher at Women's, this evidence is sufficient to raise a material issue of fact as to how, when, and where the fracture occurred, as well as to the possible fault of Women's and Acadian Ambulance."

On December 27, 2010, while transporting a pregnant patient, an Acadian Ambulance unit collided into the rear of a sugar cane truck near Brusly, Louisiana. The patient they were transporting did deliver her baby through Caesarean section, but remained critically injured. The lawsuit following the crash, Peggy Ross, et al. v. Michael Averette, et al., resulted in jury awarding $116,939,241 in damages on August 1, 2012. However the case was ultimately settled for substantially below that amount.

During Hurricane Katrina, Acadian Ambulance was contracted to provide ambulance service in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana. Prior to landfall, they were notified of multiple requests to evacuate hospitals as well as home-bound patients, including Dorothy Hingle, 83, and her son, Russell Embry, 54, from their home due to the pending hurricane. They contacted Ms. Hingle as well also others on the list on August 26, 2005, and confirmed they still needed to be evacuated as they had arrived at other homes and the individuals had already left by other means. On August 27, 2005, as the winds picked up and travel became unsafe, they called Ms. Hingle back stating they would not be able to evacuate them. Ms. Hingle and Mr. Embry drowned when their home was covered by flooding as a result of the levee failures.

Acadian was sued for negligence in Cooley V. Acadian Ambulance (2010-CA-1229, LA Ct. App., 4th Circ.). On June 11, 2009, Acadian Ambulance agreed to an undisclosed settlement with the family.

On December 12, 2012, Acadian Ambulance was ordered to pay $17 million in a class action lawsuit against them by 12th Judicial District Judge Mark Jeansonne. Keisha Desselle, et al. vs. Acadian Ambulance Service (No. 2010-5885 "A": Avoyelles Parish) was filed on October 25, 2010, in response to Acadian filing liens against accident victim's insurance settlements or civil awards allegedly in violation of LSA-R.S. 22:1874.