The Fire Department provides emergency medical services to our community with a Mobile Intensive Care Unit (MICU) staffed with two Firefighter/ Paramedics. Every responding apparatus is staffed with Firefighter/Paramedics who are trained to assist with complex or life-threatening situations.
In 2023, the department ran 2,072 emergency calls. This number is projected to increase each year due to growth and expansion in our community.
The City of Hutchins outsources the ambulance billing to a private company. To obtain a copy of an ambulance bill, please call Change Healthcare at (855) 626-9660.
For Attorney Requests & Subpoenas, please visit www.chartswap.com or contact EMSAttorneysrequest [at] Changehealthcare.com.
Medical Control
The BioTel EMS system supplies prehospital emergency medical services for over 2.4 million people in the Dallas metro area and responds to approximately 260,000 EMS 911 calls annually. Medical direction for the system is provided through the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center under the leadership of Dr. S. Marshal Isaacs.
The History of BioTel
BioTel is short for Biomedical Telemetry. "Bio" refers to a relationship with life, and "telemetry" refers to the transmission of data other than voice by means of radio.
BioTel began operations on January 3, 1975, when UT Southwestern cardiologist Drs. James Atkins and Erwin Thal, along with the leadership of Dallas Fire-Rescue, developed and implemented a new paramedic training program. These newly-minted paramedics required rapid access to a physician or nurse for medical direction and consultation, which was provided by resident physicians and staff nurses in the BioTel radio room at Parkland Memorial Hospital.
Dallas Fire-Rescue (known then as the Dallas Fire Department) was the first group to use BioTel. DFD utilized 128 paramedics, in MICUs then staffed with 1 paramedic and 1 EMT-Basic.
BioTel was initially located in a Parkland Medicine ER treatment room, and back then they had just 2 radios. At first, physicians from specific areas like medicine, OB/Gyn, surgery/trauma took calls. Cardiology fellows began taking calls from BioTel, but only for medical emergencies (non-surgery/trauma or OB/Gyn). The cardiologists would sometimes spend the night taking calls as well as monitoring Holter cardiac monitors.
BioTel is one of several centralized medical control entities in this area. BioTel differs from these other entities because it provides 24 hour-a-day online medical control in addition to offline medical control. This means that a paramedic can speak with a BioTel nurse, paramedic or physician whenever they need to, and speak with a BioTel professional who has been trained in the BioTel protocols.
BioTel moved from its location in the old Parkland hospital to the new Parkland Hospital on Wednesday, August 19, 2015.
Today
"BioTel" refers both to the EMS system in the Dallas area, in which an organized network of EMS providers all function under the same set of medical treatment guidelines as well as the BioTel radio room that provides on-line medical direction for the paramedics in the BioTel system.
The BioTel EMS system includes 11 transporting fire departments in Dallas county:
- Cedar Hill FD
- Dallas Fire-Rescue
- Desoto Fire-Rescue
- Duncanville FD
- Garland FD
- Highland Park DPS
- Hutchins FD
- Irving FD
- Lancaster FD
- Mesquite FD
- Sunnyvale DPS
- University Park FD
- Wilmer FD
Additionally, The BioTel EMS system provides medical direction for the Cockrell Hill Fire Department and on-line medical control for Acadian Ambulance.
The BioTel online medical control room at Parkland is staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week by an RN. A second person, either an RN or a paramedic, is scheduled for peak hours.
An EMS-trained faculty member of UT Southwestern is either on duty in the Parkland emergency department or immediately available for contact. All emergency medicine faculty receive orientation to the BioTel Treatment Guidelines, allowing them to provide medical direction or oversee residents as needed. EMS faculty members with bring emergency medicine residents into BioTel to provide online medical control training.
The most frequent requests for BioTel consultation:
1. Complex medical cases
2. Field determination of death
3. Destination decision-making
4. Patient Refusal documentation
5. Medical-legal issues
6. Social patient issues
BioTel also assists outside air medical and ground EMS service providers with critical information regarding the emergency care and transport of EMS patients.
BioTel has matured from being a service that only provided online medical direction to a sophisticated EMS program that serves as a critical resource for EMS providers in North Texas. BioTel assists with the conduct of EMS research and provides hospital notifications for critical trauma, burn, acute coronary syndrome, and acute stroke patients.
Link to locate Bio-Tel below:
https://www.biotel.ws/
Overview
IMPORTANT: THIS NOTICE DESCRIBES HOW MEDICAL INFORMATION ABOUT YOU MAY BE USED AND DISCLOSED AND HOW YOU CAN GET ACCESS TO THIS INFORMATION. PLEASE REVIEW IT CAREFULLY.
The Hutchins Fire Department is committed to protecting your personal health information. We are required by law to maintain the privacy of health information that could reasonably be used to identify you, known as “protected health information” or “PHI.” We are also required by law to provide you with a detailed Notice of Privacy Practices (“Notice”) explaining our legal duties and privacy practices with respect to your PHI.
We respect your privacy and treat all healthcare information about our patients with care under strict policies of confidentiality that our staff is committed to following at all times.
PLEASE READ THE DETAILED NOTICE. IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT IT, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO CONTACT OUR DEPARTMENT.