From fighting fires as a teenage volunteer to teaching college students about emergency health care, Dr. Jeffrey Jarvis’ love of helping people led him to his role overseeing emergency medical response in the nation’s 11th-largest city.
Jarvis became Fort Worth’s first medical director July 1, after the city launched its in-house emergency medical services, or EMS. He previously was the medical director for MedStar, Fort Worth’s former outsourced EMS provider, which transitioned to the city with more than 600 MedStar employees.
Most of his two and a half years with MedStar were spent coordinating Fort Worth’s takeover of the services.
Now, he is responsible for writing the city’s clinical protocols for medical service providers, reviewing each medical employee’s credentials and teaching them how the city wants them to practice.
“Texas is very unique. Most states have a state scope of practice that says, ‘This is what EMTs and paramedics can do.’ We do not,” Jarvis said. “It’s whatever the medical director says.”
Jarvis’ office works to improve Fort Worth’s medical services, offering continuing education, identifying systemic weaknesses and assuring quality of care, he said.
Texas cities are not obligated to provide EMS, but if they create such a service system, they must have a medical director.
Jarvis reports directly to Assistant City Manager Valerie Washington and is independent, by design, from the Fort Worth Fire Department and EMS.
The “checks and balances” system is a common structure cities and medical communities have preferred for decades to ensure high-quality clinical care, he said.
“They’re comfortable with knowing that the medical director cannot be coerced to change the medical practice based on the operational needs of the department,” he said.
Jarvis said his role and expertise goes beyond responding to 911 calls. The medical director’s resources also can be used to deal with issues such as homelessness, substance abuse and maternal mortality.
He chairs Fort Worth’s Medical Control Advisory Board, which is composed mostly of hospital partners and a few city staff. The board coordinates how Fort Worth and hospitals respond to the city’s most pressing issues, which range from sports event planning to prepping for heat waves.
The Office of the Medical Board has a budget of about $3 million for fiscal year 2026.
Medical director sought ‘routes to help serve’
Jarvis started his career at 18 as a volunteer firefighter in a small rural city north of Houston, where he grew up. That work led him to discover an interest in EMS.
Climbing through the credentialed ranks of emergency medical care, he soon became a paramedic. He then went to New York to study for a master’s degree in EMS with a focus on public health.
“I really enjoyed science and wanted to know more about it,” Jarvis said. “I wanted to know more about why we did the things we did as paramedics, and I wanted to help.”
After moving back to Texas, he merged into education, starting and teaching an EMS-related education program at Temple College.
EMS remained his passion over the years. He kept looking for a system overseen by a medical director that “really believed in EMS clinicians and wanted to help them grow.”
After struggling to find a medical director he was happy with, he decided to become one himself, going to medical school in Galveston to become qualified. He said medical school was primarily a route to better serve in EMS, as he loved connecting with people and helping them when they were most in need.
“My mom was a teacher, my grandmother was a teacher, and I’ve always just felt like the way to get better at anything is education,” he said. “My default is: Whatever the problem is, the answer is education.”
During his interview with MedStar in Fort Worth, Jarvis wasn’t sure he wanted to leave his job in Central Texas.
What won him over, he said, was that Fort Worth offered an outlet to have a bigger impact and serve a larger community that still felt tight-knit.
“The thing that was so special to me about EMS was that I got to form a relationship with individual people who needed help,” he said. “I still think that’s the best part of being a doctor — forming a relationship with your patients and then helping them.”
Drew Shaw is a government accountability reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at drew.shaw@fortworthreport.org or @shawlings601.
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