page_title: Seattle & King County Emergency Medical Services System
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Seattle & King County Emergency Medical Services System / History
caption_attribution_description: Item 178855, Seattle Fire Department Slides (Record Series 2801-09), Seattle Municipal Archives. English: Medic One aid unit, Seattle, Washington, U.S., circa 1970.
context_page_description: The Seattle & King County Emergency Medical Services System is a fire-based two-tier response system providing prehospital basic and advanced life support services.
  There are six paramedic provider programs in the system. The Seattle Fire Department operates Seattle Medic One. The program is funded by the city's general fund and has a different administrative structure than the five other Medic One programs. The five other Medic One programs with the exception of King County Medic One are operated by fire departments under a formal contract with the EMS Division of Public Health - Seattle & King County. King County Medic One is directly operated by the EMS Division.
  The modern EMS system in King County began operation in 1970 with 15 paramedics staffing one paramedic unit in Seattle. In 2009, there were 255 paramedics from six paramedic programs staffing 26 paramedic units.
  The system is a dynamic layered response system. An EMS response to an emergency begins with a telephone call to 9-1-1.
context_section_description: In 1968, motivated by the work of Frank Pantridge, cardiologist Leonard Cobb proposed to the chief of the Seattle Fire Department, Gordon Vickery, training firefighters to treat cardiac arrest. The department was attractive to Cobb because it already provided first aid and tracked its performance electronically.
  In 1969, they trained fifteen firefighters and used a grant from the Washington/Alaska Regional Medical Program to convert a large motor home into a Mobile Coronary Care Unit nicknamed "Moby Pig", which would respond to calls with both the firefighter paramedics and a physician on board.
  The first Medic One call was on March 7, 1970. During the program's first year, 31 lives were saved.  The following year the program was changed, replacing the on-board doctors with fire department paramedics given advanced special training and remote access to the doctors.
  In 1974, the TV news-magazine 60 Minutes profiled the success of Medic One, lauding the high standards of training and education provided by the Seattle training program.  Correspondent Morley Safer declared, "If you have to have a heart attack, have it in Seattle". The phrase is still used frequently in conjunction with Medic One, due to its continued success which is reflected in the area's high survival rate for heart attacks and their comprehensive CPR training program.
  That same year Medic One incorporated as a privately held, non-profit organization and established the Medic One Foundation, which works on behalf of both fund raising and the expansion of the program. The program is financed by local property tax levies, which are voted on by the public every six years, along with private and corporate donations.
  Medic One had saved 655 patients from cardiac arrest by 1976 and this success was gaining national and international attention.  Medic One service was expanded into the rest of King County in 1976, and in conjunction with the Medic One Foundation, other counties in Washington State began paramedic programs to serve their communities.
  In 1979, Cobb and UW professor Mickey Eisenberg began training fire department emergency medical technician - Basics (EMT-Bs) to perform the administration of defibrillation for patients in cardiac arrest since the EMTs were usually at the patient's side several minutes before the paramedics.  Eisenberg began training 9-1-1 dispatchers to provide instructions to lay-persons on how to perform CPR in 1982.  With the introduction of automatic external defibrillators (AEDs) in 1984, EMTs were able to defibrillate patients in cardiac arrest even more quickly.
caption: Patient being loaded into a Seattle Medic One ambulance circa 1970
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