Stewart's Ambulance to become employee owned in effort to recruit and keep workers
Sep. 11—Stewart's Ambulance Service is set to become employee owned in a move designed to recruit and keep workers.
The Meredith-based company expects to become the only employee-owned emergency medical service in New England by the end of the year. The company — one of the largest ambulance services in the state — provides EMS services for municipalities in Maine and New Hampshire and medical transportation for hospitals and other medical facilities.
All full-time employees can take part in the Employee Stock Ownership Plan without investing their own money. ESOPs are tax-exempt trusts, like a retirement plan, according to the ESOP Association.
The trust for Stewart's will be started with financing from banks and other sources, according to Justin Van Etten, executive chairman.
Under the new model, employees working 1,000 or more hours in a calendar year will be assigned stocks, and the rest are based how much the employee works and seniority. Employee-owned companies consistently have both higher employee engagement and greater job security, according to a news release.
"All the profits go to our employees, and that's particularly good because we need to find a way to become more efficient if we are going to service all the facilities and community members who need to be serviced," Van Etten said.
"We think that when the employees' and the owners' interests are aligned it makes for a better company," he said. "We all do better when we do better together."
More than 6,500 companies across the country use the model, including more than 180 in New England.
Van Etten said a huge part of the transformation has to do with how the employees stepped up to the plate during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Everybody else was like, 'Can I get my mail? How do I go to the grocery store?' And our folks just continued to respond to 911 calls and people's homes and going in and treating COVID-positive patients every single day," he said.
Van Etten said a large employee-owned ambulance service in Louisiana, Acadian Ambulance Service, has been successful with the model.
"When our folks do their job better at the end of the year there is more profit for them," he said.
Employees asked a lot of questions about the switch when it was announced in March, Van Etten said, but are on board with the switch.
"EMTs are a tight-knit group, but at the end of the day, we're usually working for someone else's family," said Dave Ledoux, longtime EMT and Stewart's Seacoast operations manager, in a statement. "I'm ready to start working for my own family, and I look forward to being part of a company where I get a say in how we work and how we grow."
Longstanding history
Stewart's was founded by Bob and Sydney Stewart in Meredith 41 years ago.
The company does 911 services for 10 communities, including seven in New Hampshire, and transports for a half-dozen hospitals and skilled nursing facilities. The company has between 250 and 300 employees.
Van Etten became involved in 2007 when the company was on the verge of bankruptcy. He eventually bought the business and owned it for about a decade before selling it to Massachusetts-based Transformative Healthcare. He continued with the company after the sale.
The company grew from transporting 1,600 patients per year to 50,000 since Van Etten became involved.
Competition has dwindled over that time mainly because of federal and state reimbursements, which "haven't increased much in the past decade" among other rising costs such as fuel, he said.
"We don't have competitors anymore; they've all gone bankrupt or left the state," he said. "We are one of the only ones left so this (the ESOP) is a way of ensuring continuity and survival of EMS in our region."
Growing need
Because of staff shortages in the health care industry, many EMTs and paramedics take jobs in other areas of health care, including urgent care centers and other clinics, he said.
"As hospitals have consolidated and become more efficient, that's generated a lot more demand for medical transportation," Van Etten said.
The company also offers a range of benefits that include scholarship funds, referral bonuses, and "innovative programs" that pay candidates while they train to become EMTs.
"There is more demand for our services than we can possibly meet," Van Etten said.
Some of the positions include EMTs, paramedics, dispatchers and mechanics.
Under the ESOP, employees will have more say in other benefits such as health and dental insurance.
The company is still operated by senior management along with a board of directors and trustees.
Transformative Healthcare, which currently operates Stewart's under its medical transportation arm, will continue to be an investor in the company and provide health care logistics, technology and strategic support, according to a news release.
