By John Murawski

The News & Observer

RALEIGH, N.C. — After more than a decade with Wake County Emergency Medical Services, agency director Brent Myers is taking a job with the nation's largest ambulance service.

Wake EMS employees were told Monday that Myers, 43, will be leaving on April 30 to join American Medical Response, the Colorado-based service that operates in 40 states and the District of Columbia.

Wake County EMS announces that EMS system director of the last 7 years and medical director of the last 12 years, Dr. Brent Myers, leaving for a new position as the Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President of Evolution Health as well as the Associate Chief Medical Officer of American Medical Response. (Facebook.com/WakeCountyEMS)

Myers, currently director and medical director of Wake EMS, will become associate chief medical officer at AMR and chief medical officer of Evolution Health, both subsidiaries of Envision Healthcare. He will work out of Raleigh and travel, mostly to Dallas.

Evolution Health is a community paramedic service that makes house calls and provides other preventive medical services to keep chronically ill patients out of hospitals.

Myers developed a similar program in 2009 at Wake EMS as a pilot project focusing on keeping mentally ill patients out of hospitals in Wake County.

Myers joined Wake EMS in 2002 as medical director and assumed a dual role as director in 2008. He is also an emergency room doctor who practices once a week at the Raleigh campus of WakeMed Health & Hospitals.

AMR has more than 4,200 vehicles and more than 19,000 paramedics, EMTs, nurses, doctors and support staff that operate in 2,100 communities in the United States. Wake EMS has 45 ambulances and about 260 paramedics and EMTs.

©2015 The News & Observer (Raleigh, N.C.)