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Commissioners approve EMS participation in NCTTRAC prehospital transfusion program
Summary
Cooke County EMS will participate in a North Texas regional prehospital transfusion program that supplies refrigeration and warming equipment; county will supply blood products and consumables and cover per‑use costs under existing ALS billing.
Cooke County commissioners voted 5–0 to allow county EMS to apply for and participate in a North Central Texas Trauma Regional Advisory Council (NCTTRAC) prehospital transfusion program and to authorize the county judge to sign the program agreement.
An EMS representative told the court the program is targeted to rural counties and would provide the county with equipment including an autonomous portable refrigeration unit (about $12,000), a QuinFlow body-fluid warmer (approximately $500) and two temperature probes. "What our part of it is we supply the consumables, basically, the blood tubing, the cartridge that goes in the Quinflo to heat it, and blood products," the EMS speaker said. The program would make packed red blood cells and fresh‑frozen plasma available for prehospital use.
The EMS representative said Cooke County had 14 identified incidents in 2024 when prehospital blood could have been used. Per‑use costs were estimated at $557.94, which the presenter said would be billed under the county's existing Advanced Life Support (ALS) 2 billing; the county's ALS 2 reimbursement rate was cited as $1,800. If the program is not used in a month the county would purchase plasma at about $160 per month to maintain readiness, the presenter said.
Commissioners asked whether the county would recover costs through billing; the EMS representative said use should be recoverable within existing ALS 2 billing practices although a separate line item for blood administration is still under development. The court approved the program agreement and application to NCTTRAC without amendment.
The motion to approve was made and seconded on the record; no dissent was recorded.
