In 2006, James Stafford started a career as a paramedic in EMS, and for 10 years, floated between different private and volunteer agencies, searching for that perfect fit. When he didn’t find it, he decided to hire himself.
Fast Track EMS opened in Chesapeake, Virginia, in 2016, catering mainly to private transports and inter-facility hospital discharges, with a heavy emphasis on patient care and provider satisfaction.
“I never found myself really satisfied with the way that most other services were run, and how the agencies treated their employees,” Stafford said. “A lot of them seemed like they didn’t really care; it was all the bottom line, and that’s all that mattered to them.”
Stafford said he has found success catering to both patients and providers, as opposed to seeing the entire operation as a numbers game.
“I will never be upset with somebody for taking more time to take better care of a patient,” he said. “Sometimes, grandma needs you to get her remote, or bring her phone near to her, or grab her dinner out of the fridge and set it next to her bed because nobody may be coming until the morning.”
It’s what sets Fast Track EMS apart from other agencies in the area, Stafford said.
“A lot of companies I’ve worked for have really encouraged the ‘get-in-get-out,’ so you can knock out the next call, and it’s just not the behavior we’re trying to encourage,” he said. “We want our patients to feel like they were well taken care of, and we want our crews to feel like they’ve made a difference on their day-to-day.”
A competitive pay scale is crucial
In his early days as a paramedic, Stafford said he would work more than 100 hours a week just to bring in enough money for his family to live on – something he thinks no one should have to endure.
At Fast Track EMS, EMTs start out making $3-4 above the regional average, and paramedics $7 more.
“The other ambulance services in our area that do similar work to us have tried to catch up with our wages, but we see a lot of benefits from being the ‘pusher’ for this,” he said. “With a lot of agencies, the financial aspect of how they run their business is the biggest factor to them, and I feel that’s just not an appropriate way to run your business if you’re trying to get people to actually enjoy where they work.”
Aside from a more competitive pay scale, the agency also offers generous maternity/paternity leave and a family membership to the local YMCA as part of their benefits package, but Stafford noted those are just bonuses to the company culture.
“We’ve recognized that benefits don’t really bring people in the door or keep them,” he said. “Benefits are great things to add on that keep people happy, but most will never be used.”
Making the work about the providers
In Stafford’s opinion, direct engagement with employees and respect for their opinions is what makes Fast Track EMS a highly valued employer, as well as other management tactics modeled after organizations known for their customer service, such as Southwest Airlines.
“The difference between Southwest Airlines and other airlines is that Southwest has created a fence, essentially, and all their employees are inside this fence,” he said. “The fence represents the rules that bind employees to what they need to do on a daily basis. Everything outside the fence are things they can’t do, but employees are told, ‘You have to do your job to make yourself and the people happy, as long as it does not involve going outside the fence.’”
That analogy is how Stafford runs his agency – his providers operate within the guidelines and have fun.
“If there’s something you think you can do that would improve a patient’s outcome or improve your happiness at work, and it does not involve breaking the law or the company’s guidelines, go for it,” he said. “I don’t want our employees to feel like they’re coming to a place to be tortured for 12-13 hours at a time, I want them to enjoy coming to work. I’m not saying it has to be their favorite thing to do, but I don’t want them to be miserable.”
Part of ensuring his providers are satisfied on their shifts is encouraging feedback, in a formal setting or otherwise. The company provides an anonymous phone number for employees to use if they don’t want their identity known when reporting a grievance.
Ensuring workers feel comfortable coming to leadership with problems they may have is part of a lesson Stafford said he learned at a recent Pinnacle EMS leadership conference – non-punitive self-reporting.
“I’d rather know that you backed your truck into a pole, and you come tell me in person, than me finding out two weeks later there’s damage on the back of a truck,” he said. “I have to go pull a camera and find out who did it.”
Taking this kind of approach to his agency’s operation means continuously making things better at every level.
“The longer you point fingers at other people, the longer that you’re going to be completely stagnant,” Stafford said. “If you’re not improving, you’re falling behind.”
