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The Mobile Intensive Coronary Care Unit,
or Medic One, came online as a pilot program in March of 1970.
This was a joint effort led by Harborview Head of Cardiology Dr.
Leonard Cobb and Seattle Fire Department Chief Gordon Vickery, with grant
funding from the Seattle-Alaska Regional Medical Program,
the University of Washington School of Medicine,
and additional funding came from the Washington State
Health Department and the Washington State Heart Association.
The pilot program was also buoyed by tremendous community support.
After area hospitals had developed Critical Care Units,
there was a decline in overall mortality, and yet 60%
of heart attack victims still didn't reach the hospital in time.
Precious time was taken away from saving the lives of heart attack victims
in both transportation time and the hospital admittance process.
Equipped with battery-driven electro-cardiogram monitors, pacemakers,
heart-lung resuscitators,
and defibrillators, the Medic One unit had everything that a hospital CCU had.
By arranging for CCU admission en route, the patient with a cardiac emergency
was brought directly to the Critical Care Unit, bypassing the emergency room.
Firemen attended a 12 week training program at the University Medical School
that included classroom training, but also sessions in surgery, making
hospital rounds, examining coronary patients, diagnosing illnesses,
and witnessing autopsies.
There were 3 to 5 men on board Medic One working on the patient,
and everything was recorded on the stereo tape deck, including readings
taken on board and instructions relayed from the physicians at the hospital.
To save time, electrocardiogram
outputs were converted into a tone signal and transmitted to the hospital.
In the first year of operation, Medic One went on 1813
runs and saved 44 lives, with operating costs of $130,000.
Medic One would go on to become a nationally renowned program
and model for jurisdictions all over the country and the world.
In a 1976 report, then Fire Chief Hanson
noted, “the most important reason is found within the Fire Department itself.
We have 400 men who are now certified as Emergency Medical Technicians.
This is close to one half of the total combat fire force, and the majority
of these men have received their 100 hours of training on their own time off shift.”
“Having saved 655 lives in the first six
years of service,” Hanson concluded, “Medic One is a total Seattle project.
Without public support, it would have died at the end of the first year.
It is now the most effective lifesaving project in the Pacific Northwest
and probably the nation.” In 1974, the success of Medic One
was featured on TV news program 60 Minutes, with host Morley Safer
declaring, “if you have to have a heart attack, have it in Seattle.”
To learn more about this and other subjects
in the Archives, please visit seattle.gov/cityarchives.
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