Communications

The Communications Center (or “Comm Center”) is a secondary 911 PSAP. It is staffed 24/7 by highly trained personnel, including Certified Flight Communicators certified by the International Association of Medical Transport Communication Specialists (IAMTCS) and Emergency Medical Dispatchers certified through the International Academies of Emergency Dispatch (IAED). Many of the voices of the Comm Center belong to EMTs and Paramedics who are dual-trained as Communications Specialists.

Comm Center serves as mission control for CareFlite. When precious minutes count, the dispatchers in Comm are working against the clock to mobilize and prepare emergency responders for incoming calls. 

When the phone rings, the communications specialist answers and coordinates with doctors and nurses to arrange inter-facility transport, either by helicopter or ground ambulance. Other times, the caller is a dispatcher from one of our partner agencies requesting an ambulance to a 911 call or a helicopter to intercept a major trauma or critical illness. Meanwhile, the dispatchers continuously analyze the system to provide the nearest medical crew that meets each patient’s needs.  

911 calls in our service area are answered by certified Emergency Medical Dispatchers (EMD) who are trained rigorously to meet academy standards, which emphasize mitigating critical risks to scene safety for patients, bystanders, and first responders, as well as pre-arrival instructions to patients in a medical crisis or major traumatic event. With their training, our EMDs routinely provide lifesaving first-aid instructions, including the delivery of babies, hemorrhage control, and CPR.

CareFlite is accredited by the International Academies of Emergency Dispatch, meaning we operate under the best practices recognized by the public safety community, supported by research, and driven by data. The IAED continually updates its protocols to reflect the latest advancements, and our compliance is ensured by a full-time team of CTOs, QA Compliance Administrators, and QA/Training managers. 

The on-duty flight dispatcher is responsible for locating incidents and providing critical response information for up to eight air medical teams at a time. In this extraordinarily fast-paced environment, the flight dispatcher works alongside the 911 dispatcher to organize and direct resources to multi-patient incidents. All of this occurs in minutes, dozens of times a day, usually simultaneously. 

Communications Specialists are trained to triage and handle multiple calls at a time. Often, our calls for service involve specialized critical care (e.g., intra-aortic balloon pumps, Impella heart pumps, ECMO). CareFlite also partners with NICU transport nurses and respiratory therapists at Baylor Scott & White, Texas Health, and Methodist Health System.