ANCHORAGE, ALASKA

Anchorage is the largest city in the state of Alaska. Anchorage Areawide EMS consists of Anchorage Fire Department, Chugiak Volunteer Fire and Rescue Department (CVFRD) and the Girdwood Volunteer Fire Department (GVFD) which covers 1,961 square miles and provides mutual aid to several other neighboring areas. Anchorage Fire Department has a total of 326 firefighters covering three 24-hour shifts out of thirteen fire stations serve in the Line Operations section. All line operations personnel are certified EMTs, and approximately 90 of them are paramedics. The communities to the north receive EMS service by CVFRD and the community of Girdwood at the adjacent New Seward Highway, by GVFD.

Service within the response area offers a variety of geographic challenges. Rescue and fire response to off-road terrain that requires 4-wheel drive and, occasionally, helicopters, occurs only short distances from major highways and the high-rise, downtown urban area.

The communications center for Anchorage dispatches for the AAEMS, Anchorage Safety Patrol, and all private ambulances services licensed to operate in the Municipality. They have implemented a streamlined telephone CPR program that has enabled an important increase in early arrest identification and bystander CPR.

Additionally, Anchorage has evaluated and refined the role of mechanical CPR, providing an instructive example best practices for this tool.Anchorage also puts on RAs for incoming med students to help prepare future physicians to save more lives from cardiac arrest.

Anchorage’s interventions to improve their chain of survival have resulted in above-average survival rates for both overall survival and Utstein survival.

“We have successfully used mechanical CPR in Anchorage for many years and have suffered the growing pains of adoption but the devices are integral to our HP-CPR method at this point. We have been a CARES community for well over a decade and the entire state for 5 years. We rely on our data from our TCPR through hospital discharge to help assess and improve system performance and save lives”

- Mike Levy, Medical Director for Anchorage Fire Department