The fire department has a long history of providing EMS patient transportation
to Overland Park residents and visitors.
Beginning transport service to the community in 1968, the OPFD transport services upgraded to the Advanced Life Support (ALS) level in 1999. However, the most significant change was yet to occur…
In May 2002, the OPFD joined with Johnson County Medical Action (Med-Act) to form a truly unique partnership in the provision of emergency medical services. This relationship contractually unites the resources of a progressive fire based provider (OPFD) and the strength and resources of a nationally acclaimed county third service (Med-Act) into a single operational structure.
This partnership provides five transporting ambulances for the city; each unit is staffed with two paramedics, one from OPFD and one from Med-Act.
This unique staffing arrangement provides both organizations with several
positive outcomes. The OPFD is able to deploy paramedics previously assigned
to ambulances onto "first-out" fire apparatuses at each of our five stations.
This decreases ALS response time while providing additional paramedic hands
on critical calls.
Med-Act is able to keep five ambulances available for the larger Johnson County System while only staffing one person per unit. This system also ensures that all ALS transport units in Johnson County have a Med-Act paramedic on the unit to provide a consistent and seamless medical operation.
Recently, the two entities added another feature to its partnership: The Critical Care Team. These men and women specialize in the transfer care of critically ill or injured patients from a hospital emergency room to a specialty care facility, such as coronary care or intensive care units in another hospital.
The team's special training allows paramedics to manage these patients who often require manual ventilations or are likely to be on multiple medication pumps or 12-lead ECG monitoring.
Critical Care Paramedics are dispatched to an event at the determination of the Communications Center. It is up to these men and women to move these patients quickly to save or preserve a life.