Critical Care Transport Division

Harris County Emergency Services District 1 (ESD1) relies heavily on revenue beyond its tax base to efficiently and effectively deliver patient care to the citizens within its district. The area in which Harris County ESD1 provides care is below the national socioeconomic average, which in turn financially hinders the service from providing the latest advancements in medical interventions.

Along with its tax revenue, Harris County ESD1 relies on third party billing to insurance carriers and private pay patients to help absorb some of the operating costs within the district. The amount of uninsured constituency in our service area outweighs the number of residents who have some form of medical care coverage. In turn, the majority of emergency medical services delivered to this indigent community deplete most of the revenue that we need to continue to grow.

With the continuous annual increase in call volume and the overwhelming increase in healthcare costs, it is becoming more challenging to financially sustain the most advanced emergency medical services without searching for other sources of income to assist Harris County ESD1 to effectively operate and deliver high quality, pre-hospital healthcare.

Harris County ESD1 has an innovative plan to help subsidize revenue to insure that the delivery of high quality medical care is available to each and every citizen. ESD1’s plan is to pursue the transport of non-emergency critical care patients to and from healthcare facilities and hospitals in our surrounding area. These critical care transports will help generate revenue by allowing Harris County ESD1 to remit charges to critical care patients’ insurance providers for services rendered.

The additional funding received from producing inter-facility transports will be utilized to add ambulances to our fleet to assist with the voluminous '911 emergency calls' received daily within the district. The funding will also be used to replace aging equipment, update and maintain facilities and procure the most current and advanced medical equipment available.

In January of 2006, Harris County ESD1 implemented the Critical Care Transports program amongst three local hospitals. This extended service has benefited the district’s citizens by generating additional revenue and assisting in the purchase of a much needed ambulance in our service area. This ambulance is now averaging 20 hours of dedicated '911 pre-hospital care' each and every day. Harris County ESD1 has a Critical Care Nursing Staff that accompanies the patients during Critical Care Transports. We are pleased that we are one of the few services in the country to offer such advancements in pre-hospital care. With a team consisting of Paramedics and Registered Nurses specializing in Emergency Medicine, patients are able to receive superb emergency care and transportation between healthcare facilities. In November 2007, Harris County was able to implement an additional Critical Care Unit because of the support from hospitals. The support from our many facilities has allowed us to expand because these health care facilities believe in the need for our program which was created to help subsidize the nearly 80% of our population that have no form of health care coverage. In 2007 an inter-local agreement was signed between Harris County Hospital District and Harris County ESD-1 to deliver acute patients to a higher level of care. This process actually allows the taxes used to fund the hospital, also helps support and fund an EMS agency that is partially funded by tax payers. The idea was ingenious; it’s getting double health care for one tax which helps deliver emergency services to the indigent community. Harris County ESD-1 knows of the health care crisis in America and we are proactive in the attempt to correct the problem on a much smaller scale. We strongly believe that if every hospital and EMS agency would get involved we may be able to help delineate the struggle for Health Care Coverage for our citizens and communities.

Harris County ESD1 sends out our sincerest gratitude to the hospitals for the support and subsidies that have helped our EMS system continue to excel.