The Owensboro Fire Department and American Medical Response have executed a state-mandated mutual aid agreement as they transition to offering advanced life support services.
In the past, OFD has responded in a Basic Life Support role alongside AMR, which serves locally as a contracted ambulance service. Now that they are transitioning to provide non-transport advanced life support services, the agreement between the agencies needs to be adjusted.
“The mutual aid agreement will simply formalize the highly beneficial relationship that already exists between OFD and AMR to provide the best pre-hospital care for our community,” City Manager Nate Pagan said.
Pagan said that OFD often gets to the scene faster than AMR due to proximity, and when they arrive OFD provides basic life support treatments, often understood as EMT services.
“We’ve had so many instances in the field where we see how the higher level of care will be beneficial to the patient, and beneficial to our folks because they want to do everything they can to help,” OFD Fire Chief James Howard said.
This will also open the door for firefighters to be hired as paramedics. Those that are already hired will need to be trained to meet the requirements.
As they will only be providing non-transport services, OFD will still be working in partnership with AMR when it comes to transferring patients to Owensboro Health Regional Hospital.
