Richmond Ambulance Authority has big shoes to fill in chief

In 1991, when Jerry Overton took over the Richmond Ambulance Authority, from 3 percent to 4 percent of people who went into cardiac arrest outside a hospital in Richmond survived.

Today, that number is 35 percent.

Overton has presided over a period of positive change in his time as chief executive officer of the authority. One of the nation's busiest emergency medical systems per capita, the ambulance authority transported more than 40,000 patients last year.

Overton, 59, announced his resignation last week after accepting a job as president and chief executive officer of California-based Road Safety International Inc., which produces "black box" monitoring systems used in emergency vehicles and a safe-driving program.

He says the new position provides an opportunity to make a national impact on the safety of patients and emergency responders.

When Overton became the ambulance authority's first chief executive officer, many city ambulances did not have advanced life-support equipment and paramedics trained to use them. Now, all 28 ambulances have both.

"I think at this point in time, we've pushed the edge almost as far as we can push the edge in EMS," he said.

Under Overton, the authority implemented a system called "FirstWatch" that continuously scans incoming 911 medical emergency calls, looking for symptoms or illnesses that show any trends, such as a flu outbreak.

Colleagues say it will be difficult to replace Overton.

"He understands that all that we do is all about the patient, and he never, never loses sight of that," said Dr. Joseph Ornato, medical director for the ambulance authority and chairman of Virginia Commonwealth University's Department of Emergency Medicine "I can't give anybody in our field a higher praise than that."

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Late in 2007, the ambulance authority terminated a contract with American Medical Response after the company failed over several months to meet required response times for life-threatening calls.

Under Overton's leadership, the ambulance authority took full control of the city's ambulance response and emergency medical personnel in November 2007, and the authority has met response times for lifethreatening calls every month since then, Overton said. The authority has about 250 employees.

Overton said he will long remember the experience of Hurricane Isabel, which caused extensive damage and prolonged power outages across the Richmond area and killed more than 30 people statewide in 2003. Because high winds made it dangerous for ambulances to cross bridges, he implemented two deployment strategies -- one for north of the James River and one for south.

The outages left rescuers scrambling to help people who depended on breathing machines.

Then there was the eve of the new millennium, when he remembers someone joking that there was an ambulance on every city block. "We had ambulances everywhere," Overton recalled. "And nothing happened."

Overton is a past president of the American Ambulance Association. In 1993, he went to war-torn Bosnia and helped set up ambulance service for more than 200,000 people living near Sarajevo.

Overton has not decided when he will leave Richmond for his new job. The ambulance authority's board of directors is launching a national search for his replacement.

Dr. Joseph P. McMenamin, chairman of the authority's board, said it will be difficult to find someone with Overton's ability and character.

"I frankly wish he weren't leaving," McMenamin said.

Contact Reed Williams at (804) 649-6332 or .