The British Columbia Ambulance Service came into being in 1974 through Provincial legislation bringing together the small, commercial companies formerly providing the service.
BCAS currently has over 1000 full time and 2000 part time employees completing approximately 530,000 calls annually. Our staff take care of all transfers, air evacuations and street calls using three communication centres across the province.
The communication centre in Vancouver is staffed by 12-20 Emergency Medical Dispatchers (EMD) and Emergency Medical Call Takers (EMCT). We use AMPDS to assess and prioritize calls from a population of 2.5 million people.
We have our share of regulars and our share of first time callers. We have our share of really sick people and more than our share of possible abusers of the system. I’m going to try to give you a feel of who we are.
