FORT WORTH, Texas — Nearly five months after its launch, Fort Worth’s new emergency medical service is still working to bring ambulance response times down to city goals, but remains several minutes off the mark.
The city council has set a benchmark for the fire-based EMS division, which took over on July 1, to reach 90% of emergency calls in under eight minutes. Records obtained by the Fort Worth Report show the service is hitting 90% of calls at 11 minutes and 9 seconds.
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According to city estimates, the response times are 30 seconds slower than those reported by MedStar, the city’s previous ambulance provider, in the year before the fire department assumed control.
In October, when the fire chief abruptly resigned amid reported clashes with the firefighters’ union, the union criticized him for not understanding what constitutes acceptable EMS and fire on-scene times.
Fire officials say the slower response times are temporary growing pains as crews adjust to new systems and leadership refines procedures. They’ve already made changes, including deploying ambulances from multiple locations instead of a single hub.
Average response time for high-priority calls over the past four months is 6:43, with 90% of calls answered under 11:09. The city created its own EMS system after a consultant found MedStar financially unsustainable and too inefficient for Fort Worth’s growth, and officials say unifying ambulances, police and fire under one city-run dispatch should ultimately streamline responses, though they stress that fixing system weaknesses will take time.
Fort Worth’s new EMS branch has an annual operating cost of about $89.2 million, with roughly $65 million expected from billing and $1.7 million from contracts with 14 surrounding cities. EMS Administrator Heath Stone said response times should improve as the department fills open EMT positions, shifts from a single central ambulance post to using all 45 fire stations as deployment points, and brings 92 newly graduated single- and dual-role responders into service.
