Meet Austin’s Airport Medics

How do you improve EMS response times at a crowded metropolitan airport where traffic access is a problem? By opening an EMS station within the airport itself.

That’s the solution that Texas’ Austin-Travis County EMS (ATCEMS) is testing at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (AUS). Since March 1, 2023, the agency has been operating an airport medic pilot program at the airport. Every day, during the facility’s busiest 12 hours, ATCEMS on-site paramedics are drawn from a team of seven, and they answer calls at the airport, either individually or in teams. The airport medics are currently based in temporary accommodations at Austin-Bergstrom International’s Barbara Jordan terminal, with a permanent station now being built.

“This year we anticipate that we're going to see over 25 million people travel in or out of Austin-Bergstrom, which is up from 20 million in 2022,” said Steven White, ATCEMS’ division chief of integrated services. “We ran about 16,000 calls for service at the airport campus last year, and we were finding that to be a pretty big drain on our system’s EMS resources. We were having to divert ambulances away from their normal operating districts to respond out at the airport. So it just made a lot of sense to go ahead and partner with AUS to put paramedics in the airport terminal itself, and only call for other resources if needed.”

Saving Time, Saving Lives

Having airport medics on site at AUS is truly a time-saver. Under the old model, ATCEMS crews had to be dispatched from a local station and pass through airport security before reaching patients inside—a necessary procedure that ate up precious response time.

“What we're trying to overcome is how long it was taking us to get to a patient on the secure side by responding with an outside resource,” said White. “On average, that was a little over 16 minutes. So any improvement over that 16-minute mark is going to be considered a success.”

Under the new model, medics are based in the airport’s secure side, reducing the time from dispatch to treatment. It’s an approach already being used by the Austin Fire Department’s Airport Fire Rescue program, which has an AUS-specific fire station located on the airfield.

“Most of our calls are on the secure side at the terminal gates or on incoming flights,” White said. “If you're on the outside of security—even badged—you're having to go through multiple doors with multiple access points to get to a call. So being on the secure side really makes a difference to patient care. We're able to respond so much faster.”

Big, Busy Environment

AUS is a busy place. So busy, in fact, that ATCEMS airport medics have to reach their calls on foot, pulling their wheeled stretchers behind them. Pulling rather than pushing is required because passengers are accustomed to navigating around others pulling wheeled bags.

“The terminal is quite long, about a half-mile from end to end,” said White. “With this space being so incredibly crowded with passengers and staff, it is very difficult to get through the terminal using any sort of vehicle, even an electrified cart. So our response time is dictated by how long it takes to walk from the station, which is centralized in the middle of the terminal, to either end. Still, this is a vast improvement from trying to serve these calls using outside personnel.”

So how much walking is required for the job? “They are averaging about 14,000 steps per day,” White explained of his airport medics. “If they're not really fit right now, they're going to be fit very soon.”

Airport medics must learn their way around AUS in a hurry. The campus they cover includes the parking lots, baggage areas, and the flight line with all the refueling trucks and aircraft.

“Getting to know a very, very large campus that has millions of square feet is taking a little bit of time, but they have been extremely well received,” said White. “Everyone out there has been very, very accommodating as our people learn how to get around.”

Promising Results

Not only are ATCEMS airport medics reaching patients within AUS in a much more timely manner, most of their patients are resuming their journeys after being treated on site rather than going to the hospital.

“When we looked at the data, there's not a ton of transports out of the airport,” White said. “This is because people's decision-making changes at airports. They've invested a lot of time and money on making their flights, and there may be a lot of things riding on them completing their trips. Normally, if these patients were having this medical emergency at home, they would have no problem going to the hospital. But we have found that it takes a much bigger emergency to actually convince someone to go to the hospital from an airport if they're flying into the airport, especially because they are not familiar with the medical system here.”

To cope with this, ATCEMS airport medics use alternative treatments to help as many patients as possible safely resume their travels. “We try to treat the issue at hand so that person can make their flight or facilitate treatment off-site and still get that patient back for their flight,” said White.

Even during its pilot phase, the ATCEMS program has improved response times at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport while reducing the demand on its overall EMS system.

“It’s making a real difference to everyone involved,” White said. “Having paramedics on site at an airport, or indeed any major crowded venue with secure access, is a great way to deal with this kind of service challenge.”

James Careless is a frequent contributor to EMS World.