LARGO, Fla. (June 20, 2013) — National ambulance/EMS service provider Paramedics Plus announces that the Commission of Accreditation of Ambulance Services (CAAS) has individually accredited all five of the company’s divisions. This includes renewal for its Pinellas County branch, Sunstar Paramedics.

Paramedics Plus is the operator of five wholly owned divisions in major metropolitan areas nationwide, and serves as the 911-service provider in each of those five locations.

“It is unusual for a large provider to be able to accomplish this across their system,” said Ron Schwartz, president of Paramedics Plus. “I want to commend our administrative staff for the hard work and dedication that these accreditations signify. CAAS’s stringent standards reflect our company’s goals and philosophies.”
CAAS is an independent commission that established a comprehensive series of standards for the ambulance service industry. CAAS accreditation signifies that an EMS service has met the “gold standard” determined by the ambulance industry. These standards often exceed those established by state or local regulation. The CAAS standards are designed to increase operational efficiency and clinical quality, while decreasing risk and liability to the organization.

In addition to the CAAS accreditation, Sunstar’s operations dispatch center is ACE accredited by the National Academies of Emergency Dispatch, and the Commission on Accreditation of Medical Transport System (CAMTS) accredits Sunstar for its critical care transport services. Sunstar is one of only two operations in the country and one of only three in the world to hold all three of these accreditations.

“We are thrilled that we renewed our accreditations with CAAS,” said Mark Postma, COO with Sunstar Paramedics. “These accreditations are important to us – they signify our level of standards for EMS services.”

About Sunstar Paramedics:

Sunstar is the 911 ambulance transport service for all Pinellas County residents, with 550 local employees, and responding to around 500 calls a day. Highly awarded and accredited, Sunstar utilizes state-of-the-art equipment and software, and (along with parent company Paramedics Plus) is an innovator of the industry’s best practices. Sunstar’s people are heavily involved in Pinellas communities, focusing largely on public safety programs for the public and for schools.

Sunstar is also a recipient of the Florida Governor’s Sterling Award, the state’s most prestigious
award recognizing “role models for organizational performance excellence.”