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