SLS 21RS-1918 ORIGINAL
2021 Regular Session
SENATE RESOLUTION NO. 94
BY SENATOR BOUDREAUX
COMMENDAT IONS. Commends Acadian Companies for 50 years of service to the
citizens of Louisiana.
1 A RESOLUTION
2 To commend Acadian Companies for fifty years of service to the citizens of Louisiana.
3 WHEREAS, founded in 1971, Acadian Companies is a multi-faceted and
4 employee-owned company with six divisions, a global reach, and a mission of improving
5 the lives of their patients, customers, and employees through its innovative spirit and
6 dedicated team of professionals; and
7 WHEREAS, Acadian Ambulance Service, Inc. is the largest employee-owned
8 ambulance service in the nation and has earned a reputation as one of the nation's most
9 respected and accomplished medical transportation companies; and
10 WHEREAS, when funeral homes ceased services, Acadian Ambulance Service, Inc.
11 began operations at 12:01 a.m. on September 1, 1971, with three young cofounders, two
12 ambulances, and eight medics to cover two hundred seventy-nine square miles of households
13 in Lafayette Parish; and
14 WHEREAS, Acadian Ambulance Service, Inc. has been in continuous operation
15 since September 1, 1971, for twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred
16 sixty-five days a year for fifty years, through hurricanes, floods, ice storms, and, now a
17 pandemic; and
18 WHEREAS, over the past five decades, Acadian Companies' service area has grown
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SLS 21RS-1918 ORIGINAL
1 to include thirty-five parishes in Louisiana, thirty-five counties in Texas, one county in
2 Mississippi, and one county in Tennessee; Acadian Companies has a fleet of six hundred
3 twenty-eight ambulances, twelve helicopters, and five fixed-wing aircraft that are staffed by
4 twenty-seven hundred medics who transport more than six hundred thirty-five thousand
5 patients annually; and
6 WHEREAS, Acadian Companies delivers compassionate and highly-skilled medical
7 care to more than twenty-four million residents and have a service area that includes almost
8 sixty-two thousand square miles; and
9 WHEREAS, Acadian Companies is one of the very few companies in the nation that
10 is accredited by both the Commission on Accreditation of Ambulance Services (CAAS) and
11 the Commission on Accreditation of Medical Transport Systems (CAMTS), signifying the
12 gold standard in pre-hospital care; and
13 WHEREAS, in 1981, Acadian Companies expanded to include Acadian Air Med and
14 the addition of Air Med's fixed-wing fleet led to the creation of the Executive Aircraft
15 Charter Service in 1991; and
16 WHEREAS, in the 1980s, Acadian Companies began providing medics to work on
17 oil installations in the Gulf of Mexico and Safety Management Systems, L.L.C. is now one
18 of the largest providers of health, safety, environmental, inspection, medical emergency, and
19 disaster response services in this country; and
20 WHEREAS, in 1991, Acadian Companies started offering personal medical alert
21 systems, which expanded into a broader range of security monitoring under Acadian
22 Monitoring Services L.L.C., and then into security equipment and installations as Acadian
23 Total Security, L.L.C.; and
24 WHEREAS, Acadian Companies instituted an Employee Stock Ownership Plan
25 (ESOP); the late United States senator from Louisiana, Honorable Russell B. Long, one of
26 the authors of the ESOP legislation, touted Acadian Companies as a model ESOP, the kind
27 of company he hoped for when he helped to initiate ESOPs; currently, employees of Acadian
28 Companies own eighty percent of the company's stock; and
29 WHEREAS, Acadian Companies launched the National EMS Academy in 2003, a
30 fully accredited partnership with South Louisiana Community College and Texas A&M
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1 Engineering Extension Service to educate emergency medical technicians (EMTs) and
2 paramedics for agencies throughout the United States; and
3 WHEREAS, in furtherance of its desire to pay it forward in the communities it
4 serves, Acadian Companies has partnered with the National Association for the
5 Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and other local inclusion and diversity groups
6 to provide a scholarship program for young men and women interested in a career in
7 emergency medical services; and
8 WHEREAS, due to the remarkable dedication of its employee-owners, Acadian
9 Companies has garnered international acclaim and recognition from the American
10 Ambulance Association, the United States Senate, William Henry Gates III (Bill Gates) ,
11 author and co-founder of the Microsoft Corporation, Inc. Magazine, many emergency
12 medical service industry organizations, and even the Smithsonian Institution; and
13 WHEREAS, Acadian Companies is proud of its Louisiana roots; it employs over
14 fifteen hundred medics and has almost three thousand total employees in the state; and
15 WHEREAS, the culture associated with this great state, and the relationships
16 established, together with the dedicated service of its employees, and with community,
17 health care, and governmental leaders is the foundation upon which Acadian Ambulance
18 Service, Inc. was built, and will enable Acadian Companies to continue serving the citizens
19 of Louisiana for another fifty years and beyond.
20 THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Senate of the Legislature of Louisiana
21 does hereby commend and congratulate Acadian Companies for fifty years of service to the
22 citizens of Louisiana.
23 BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that a copy of this Resolution be transmitted to
24 Acadian Companies.
The original instrument and the following digest, which constitutes no part
of the legislative instrument, were prepared by Sharon F. Lyles.
DIGEST
SR 94 Original 2021 Regular Session Boudreaux
Commends Acadian Companies for 50 years of service to the citizens of Louisiana.
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