I have written on this before, many years ago. My experience with Acadian was in 2005 post-Hurricane Katrina and Rita. From my experience, and from what I now of them THEN, I am a fan. If anything has changed or gone belly up in the past 15 years, I am not aware.
I responded after Katrina for a FEMA contractor, did my time and then Rita started advancing on us. I then jumped ship and moved over to Acadian as a contractor because so many of their staff were displaced or devastated and they had another storm bearing down.
They paid me very well, I lived in the station and I basically worked 36 on, 12 off, repeat for well over a month and a half. I had a LOT of time to interact with the staff an hear both sides of how they felt about their company. I seriously considered staying on as a full timer, ultimately decided no simply due to my family situation at the time.
Pros: They are employee owned. You get in there, grow, and contribute financially,you can build yourself a nice retirement. Their equipment, supplies, training...were all current, updated. They seemed to care from exec to mgmt to supervisor on down. Cost of living in LA is very low compared to my other past experiences. Opportunities...so many. You can grow through typical EMS, you can go offshore, you can go flight, you can go dispatch. I LOVED their dispatch...keep in mind this was 2005 and their dispatch was staffed by PARAMEDICS.Dispatch is a great career, rehab from injury, or transition when too old for ops but still want to work and Acadian properly used them in my opinion. I like having Medic call takers and even better...we did NOT do any paper reporting, in fact we did NOT write an reports. We called a Paramedic dispatcher who we dictated our run to. They ensured we made no errors or missed anything. It was quick and painless. And it was great for them from a billing perspective. Later on, the report would be sent to us, we review it, sign it and done! Anyways, they always seem to be growing and expanding which means there are tons of lateral or upward movements.
Cons: Not a fan of the uniforms, however they are a throwback to the history of the company. System Status of many units/stations. Only flight had ability for some of the interventions needed, which from a patient care perspective bothered me. Example, I was in remote area, long tx time and had a CHF patient I could not get nasally intubated and he was going to crump definitely before I got him to a hospital. (this was pre-CPAP in field). I had to call the flight team to come and intubate the guy. And of course from an employee perspective, the speed/driving trackers on every unit are not favored, from a mgmt perspective they are great for insurance reasons. Basically they know where you are at all times, how fast, how hard you brake, how fast you accelerate and you do get written up for these things. But if you dont drive like a douche, they are great because they reduce risk/accidents, and also save money wear and tear on vehicles...cause remember, employee owned. You save the company money, in theory they buy you nice things, pay you well, or provide for you in some way.
