About Us

The North East Quadrant Advanced Life Support, Inc. is registered in New York State as a not for profit corporation. NEQALS is also tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code and organizations with this designation are also commonly referred to as charitable organizations.

NEQALS primarily provides emergency advanced life support (ALS) level of care in the towns of Webster, Ontario, and Penfield. NEQALS is certified by the New York State Department of Health (DOH) as a Paramedic intercept agency, meaning that NEQALS provides service using first response vehicles, also known as "fly cars", that respond to emergency medical calls along with ambulances from other fire department and ambulance agencies.

NEQALS also provides emergency medical technicians to augment other agency's ambulances as the pool of available volunteers continues to decrease. These staffing agreements are really looked upon as partnerships with these other agencies to ensure that timely emergency medical services are provided to residents and businesses in the area.

For answers to commonly asked questions about who NEQALS is, including the type of service we provide and our billing practices, please see our Frequently Asked Questions page.

NEQALS History

The founding of NEQALS was a derivative of the efforts by the Xerox Corporation to provide on-site Emergency Medical Services to their Webster, NY manufacturing complex. In 1985 Xerox put in service their “Medic 90” ALS response vehicle. This vehicle was staffed by three Xerox employees that, along with their primary job functions as engineers and tradesmen, were trained as Critical Care medical technicians. To keep their skills current, Xerox allowed these three individuals to take the Medic 90 vehicle home during the evening and weekends to provide ALS service to the Town of Webster. These technicians responded to approximately 500 calls in 1986 and over 700 in 1987. However by doing this additional service as volunteers to the community, it was realized that the current technicians could not handle the growing number of responses themselves. To solicit the additional volunteers needed to successfully staff Medic 90 first required that the volunteer be an employee of Xerox, which would undoubtedly limit many potential volunteers from joining.

In 1986 a group of individuals, representing the volunteers from Medic 90 and the three fire departments that served the Webster area formed a planning committee that sought to create a wholly independent organization to provide ALS services to Webster. This committee became the Board of Directors when NEQALS was incorporated in 1987. After months of fund raising, equipment procurement, and other preparations, NEQALS went into service with their Medic 10 response vehicle in June of 1988 with seven active duty members and a $35,000 annual budget. This vehicle was housed at the Webster Fire Department in the Village of Webster, which also provided NEQALS storage and bunk space. In 1994 a second response vehicle, Medic 11, went into service as the increasing needs of the towns required additional service.

Since that time NEQALS has added a third response vehicle, Medic 12. In 2002, NEQALS also began putting into place a comprehensive plan that would eventually lead to NEQALS becoming a agency with all paid staff and one that no longer relied on tax revenue to fund their entire operations. Today NEQALS totals over 40 employees and an operating budget of over a million dollars.