MedStar EMS Fort Worth?

[chbare]

Anybody know anything about MedStar in Fort Worth Texas? My wife had an encounter with a MedStar crew a couple of days ago.

Take care,

chbare.

[Dustdevil]

I haven't worked there since 1987, but I know a little about it, still living there.

I think we have two members here who work there currently.

[paramedicmike]

"An encounter"? This doesn't sound promising.

Hope it wasn't as bad as that lead in let's on.

[chbare]

Oh no, it was quite good. She was very impressed with their professional conduct. So much, she contacted their HR department. My wife has pretty high expectations, so I was curious about this company.

Take care,

chbare.

[fireflymedic]

Oh no, it was quite good. She was very impressed with their professional conduct. So much, she contacted their HR department. My wife has pretty high expectations, so I was curious about this company.

Take care,

chbare.

Excellent - hopefully if they are doing things right as from the sounds of this crew (at least they acted professionally) more services will follow their lead.

[chbare]

Excellent - hopefully if they are doing things right as from the sounds of this crew (at least they acted professionally) more services will follow their lead.

Interestingly enough, HR contacted my wife and stated my wife's comments would be placed in the crew's employee records. So, points for professionalism, follow up, and employee support. I was wondering how this company is in general.

Take care,

chbare.

[Echoburger]

MedStar EMS or "The Area Metropolitan Ambulance Authority" (or something like that)...provides 911 service to the citizens of Fort Worth, Texas and fifteen surrounding cities including: Blue Mound, Burleson, Edgecliff Village, Forest Hill, Fort Worth, Haltom City, Haslet, Lakeside, Lake Worth, River Oaks, Saginaw, Sansom Park, Westover Hills, Westworth Village, and White Settlement. MedStar EMS also does non-emergency interhospital transports and emergency critical transfers. MedStar 911 utilizes "System Status Management" to deploy ambulances in areas where calls are predicted to come in at certain times of the days. MedStar utilizes a combination of EMT-B's, EMT-I', and EMT-P's. Every unit is MICU equipped. It is not unusual to have 3 personnel on a MedStar unit. MedStar works along with TCC (Tarrant County College) for EMS ride-alongs for their EMT programs.

I do not really know a whole lot about MedStar. In fact, if I can say this nicely, the majority of times MedStar has been in the news has been for negative reason.

1. MedStar at one point (approximately 6 months ago or so) was so short staffed that the Fort Worth Fire Department (FWFD) had to ask Firefighter/EMTs to work overtime on brush trucks to first respond to high priority medical calls. The brush trucks functioned as "Attack Units" and the system was so short of EMTs and Medics that the system had calls constantly on hold and units were clearing and getting calls literally seconds after calling in available. http://www.texas-fire.com/2007/09/11/fw-in-need-of-more-emergency-medical-personnel/

2. MedStar was recently featured for having a response time of over one HOUR to a "non-emergent" or priority 3, seizure call.

http://www.emsresponder.com/web/online/Top-EMS-News/Texas-Mother-Waits-1-Hour-For-Ambulance/1$7579

3. And perhaps one of the most stories about MedStar includes two EMTs that had sex with a 15 year old girl while she was on a ride-along. People called MedStar Paramedics "Pararapers" for many months after this incident.

...Don't get me wrong. Just because MedStar has been featured for bad response times and the "Incident"...it doesn't mean that the system itself is bad. I've met PLENTY of great Medics/EMTs that worked for MedStar.

The sad thing is that the last story really took a toll on their reputation.

MedStar's recruiting website: www.medstar.jobs

MedStar's EMS Protocols: http://www.epabonline.org/

Hope this helps, chbare. Let me know if you need anything else.

[FireMedic65]

Nice post Echo. MedStar seems like a really nice company, aside from a few bad apples. Sadly, that's usually all you hear about is the negative stuff and rarely ever hear about the good.

[Dustdevil]

People keep using the word "company". It's not a company. It is a government entity. There is no company or contractor involved. It was originally a PUM system, but Hartson, Mercy, Laidlaw, AMR, and Rural Metro all FAILED, so the ambulance authority took over running the system themselves several years back. I haven't kept up enough to know how things have or have not changed since the takeover, but it seems things are about the same. It's always been a decent system, medically speaking. But it still suffers the same problems it always did. Low pay. Poor retention. SSM mismanagement and burnout. Top-heavy bureaucracy. They have a monopoly on all ambulance service within the service area. No privates are allowed to transport for any reason. Consequently, MedStar has to transport everything, regardless of severity or ability to pay. That means they are often overloaded, so now they're trying out one of those "supermedic" programmes to try and cut back on abuse. Dipshits.

Regardless of all the negatives, they're the only non-fire game in town, so it's where all the wannabes go to work, and they end up with a lot of good people who are pretty well supervised and educated. Unfortunately, they still employ EMT-Bs. But I'd still rather get sick or injured in FW than in Dallas any day.