Hartson's Ambulance Service

This site is dedicated to all the men and women who once worked at the greatest ambulance service in America, Hartson's Ambulance Service in San Diego California.  AMR, which is now the largest provider of pre-hospital medical transportation in the United States, can trace it's gigantic roots to that one small ambulance service.   

Bob Hartson started his ambulance service back in 1953, a long time before EMT's, paramedics, and……..politics entered the pre-hospital transportation market.  The service began to grow and really became the premier ambulance service in San Diego in the late '70's and early '80's.

Hartson's Ambulance was once located at 4318 47th Street in San Diego.  It had it's own state of the art dispatch center and a computer named "Einstein".  Einstein was once state of the art as well, but by today's standards, Einy wouldn't even compete with a Palm Pilot.  We even had our own gas pump right there on the property.

Crews were given a lunch free of charge every day and since Fran was the one who made the lunches, we all called them "Franwhiches".  Fran always included a homemade cookie in the lunch and people actually looked forward to them.

Hartson's Ambulance stood for QUALITY.  It was a great organization which stressed employee involvement and developed many of the leaders in EMS today.   There were many committees such as the Merit Committee, which chose the Employee of the Month, the Failsafe Committee, which tracked rig failures and incidents, Equipment Review Committee, and more.  Many of the leaders at AMR today can trace their roots to Hartson's.

When Bob Hartson retired in 1982, he sold the company to a group of  individuals which contained two current employees.  The new company was named Hartson Medical Services and the group then quickly created MedTrans which expanded to many regions of the country.  MedTrans was one of the" Big Three"  (MedTrans, AMR, Rural Metro) ambulance services in the USA.  To make a long story short, MedTrans (Hartson Medical Services)  was then purchased by Laidlaw, which then purchased AMR combining the two and retaining the AMR name.

Working at Hartson's Ambulance Service was more than just having a job, it was working with family.  I miss those days of EMS when Johnny and Roy were saving people 200 feet in the air every week and I miss the days of using 10 codes on the radio and wearing smocks and burgundy corduroy pants.  Back then we all felt as if we were part owners in all of EMS.  Now, the HMO's and the government own it.

I Miss Hartson's Ambulance Service!