In 2014 Timothy Niggemeyer moved on from Tri-Hospital EMS. He had spent 17 years with the private emergency medical service, but Croswell in Sanilac County needed a new EMS director and he was ready to move on.
Now Niggemeyer is back, taking over as the new CEO of Tri-Hospital EMS, which covers emergency medical services for 26 of the 31 townships and municipalities in St. Clair County.
“When (former Tri-Hospital EMS CEO Ken Cummings) announced his retirement, it was a job that I was interested in. It was a company that I knew,” he said.
A lot has changed since Niggemeyer left. In 2014 Tri-Hospital EMS was just adding its fifth and sixth ambulances. The service was responding to an estimated 10,000 calls a year at the time, whereas in 2025 it was just under 26,000.
It’s all part of the adjustment Niggemeyer has to make as he takes over for Cummings, who announced his retirement in April. It also ties into his first major task as Tri-Hospital EMS’s new CEO, which is lobbying for renewal of the St. Clair County Ambulance Service Millage that will be put to a vote in August.
When Niggemeyer first graduated from high school he moved from one field to another before settling on emergency medical services as a career in 1997.
“There were a couple of different things that I was interested in,” Niggemeyer said. “I was in the automotive field for a while. Then I went to school for accounting, I went to school for (information technology), I went to school for management. But this was always an interest of mine. We had a variety of tasks we had to do, with something different every day.”
Niggemeyer said he particularly liked Tri-Hospital EMS for its training of employees for higher roles. The company has run an education center in Fort Gratiot for several years to train its own employees and other EMS workers for various situations they may encounter on the job.
As the new CEO, part of Niggemeyer’s job will be to consider how new technology will integrate into EMS work and how to prepare EMTs and paramedics for those changes.
“We know AI is going to come into this industry,” Niggemeyer said, “We have some ideas on how, but were not 100% sure, we just know it’s coming.”
Niggemeyer’s biggest concern right now, however, is securing funding to keep Tri-Hospital EMS operating at the same level it is today.
Most of the company’s funds come from patients’ health insurance, but in 2022 St. Clair County residents voted in favor of a tax of 0.5 mills to provide funding for EMS services in the county.
At the time, Cummings said the company was on “life support” without the funds. Both Cummings and Niggemeyer said that’s still the case in 2026.
The millage allows the company to stay competitive with the salaries it offers its employees and potential hires. It also allows it to maintain its current fleet of ambulances.
Niggemeyer said most of the time Tri-Hospital EMS doesn’t need all of its ambulances, but having them on patrol means the company is ready when an unexpected spike in activity occurs and is able to respond to each of the municipalities under its service in a timely manner.
That also means, however, that some of those ambulances are incurring costs without generating revenue. Those costs have been exasperated in recent months as gasoline prices have increased.
If the proposal passes it would reduce the millage to 0.4993 mills and raise an estimated $4,330,595 in its first year for EMS services countywide.
Niggemeyer said he’s been meeting with county officials and working to raise awareness of the millage as election day approaches.
Cummings has stayed around at Tri-Hospital EMS to help guide Niggemeyer during the transition, but he said his workload decreases each day. Niggemeyer now sits in his old office, leading the EMS company that started him on his career path.
“I was here for 17 years, and it was a tough decision to leave,” Niggemeyer said. “but to return wasn’t a tough decision. I just felt this is the place I needed to be.”
Contact Johnathan Hogan at jhogan@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Port Huron Times Herald: New CEO hits the ground running during transition at Tri-Hospital EMS
Reporting by Johnathan Hogan, Port Huron Times Herald / Port Huron Times Herald
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