EMS Building

EMS Building currently in construction on the Ada South Campus, near the Chickasaw Nation Medical Center.

With 10,000 square feet of space, the planned Emergency Medical Services building will accommodate personnel, equipment and ambulances in addition to critically needed storage space for the medical center.

The building will house four ambulances, 18 medics and provide a home-away-from-home atmosphere for EMS personnel. Additional staff may be added once construction has concluded.

Since the opening of CNMC more than five years ago, the tribe has experienced exponential growth serving the medical needs of Chickasaws and Native Americans from across America.

The move is a way the tribe is proactively addressing the growth of its EMS service.

In 2015, EMS personnel made more than 1,000 trips to aid Native Americans who were either too ill to drive themselves to CNMC or required medically-trained personnel to make the trip with them.

Tribal EMS workers drive an average of 90 miles per trip and have answered calls as far away as Houston, Texas.

Half of the building will be used as a warehouse for the medical center. The other half will be devoted entirely to EMS needs, including:

• Living and working quarters consisting of a large communal room with a kitchen, four sleeping rooms, two offices in addition to laundry, showers and other amenities.
• State-of-the-art radio and monitoring equipment as technology expands.
• Implementation of the new OK-EMS Information System database for run reporting and a system to track and support ambulances.
• In-house training facilities for medics. EMS officials were forced to travel to training sessions in the past.
• Maintaining a full staff of medics 24 hours per day, seven days a week to offer the quickest response times possible.

Gov. Anoatubby said the new structure will give the Chickasaw Nation an opportunity to reach a growing number of Chickasaws and other Native Americans that reside outside the traditional 13-county tribal territory.