Work with The Paramedic Foundation as a specialist

Who TPF wants to hear from

TPF is a mission-based organization, and it does not run as a staffing agency. People come to work with TPF because the work matters to them. TPF’s principals are practitioners who have spent their careers building this field, and they are still at it. TPF also wants mid-career professionals who want to learn from, and work beside, people who have shaped paramedicine for decades.

TPF wants depth in one area more than broad knowledge. It wants the expert on one hard problem. That might be how rural emergency medical services (EMS) are governed, or how community paramedicine programs are designed. It might be workforce sustainability, EMS data and analytics, drafting laws and policy, financial modeling or frontier clinical systems. That person also has the field credibility to walk into a room of skeptics and be taken seriously.

TPF also wants to find people it has not met yet. You may have done important work in a corner of this field that has not drawn national attention. That is the kind of expertise TPF wants among its specialists, and those people interest TPF most of all.

What the work looks like

TPF works across four continents. It does formal consulting projects for state agencies, county governments, regional EMS bodies and hospital systems. It does policy support and work for nongovernmental groups. That work does not always carry a consulting fee. It has partnerships in curriculum and workforce development. It also runs multi-year projects to evaluate and launch systems, in some of the most geographically and operationally complex environments in the world.

Each project is different. Some call for months of deep analysis. Others need a focused expert voice for one deliverable or one policy moment. TPF builds each team around what the work requires, drawing on whoever fits best. An expert might make one focused contribution, or stay for years on one project or on several at once.

TPF is growing. The work TPF is positioned to take on is more than its current specialists can absorb. TPF is building the people, technology and operations to run several projects at once, across several countries and policy settings. That is the opportunity in front of TPF, and TPF wants people who want to help build it.

How experts work with TPF

Consultants bring what they know. TPF brings the organizational infrastructure, the client relationships, the contracts and the mission context. TPF has no billable-hour culture and no layers of account managers between the consultant and the work. Your expertise is used as it is, without being sanded down to fit a standard service line.

Experts who join TPF get an operational base. It covers contracting, financial administration and project management infrastructure. They also get the standing of a Minnesota nonprofit corporation that is tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. TPF’s founding principals have worked together in this field since 2005. Experts can take work through TPF, or bring their own projects to TPF without setting up a separate entity. TPF handles that infrastructure so consultants can focus on the work only they can do.

TPF builds its work on lasting relationships, and it treats the people who work with it as colleagues. TPF works with the same people across many projects and many years, because trust is an operational asset in this field. If you want a one-off, transactional arrangement, TPF is probably the wrong fit. If you want work that matters, with people who will still know your name in a decade, read on.

Areas of knowledge TPF is building

TPF most wants experts with deep hands-on or research background in these areas.

• Rural and frontier EMS governance: how regulation is set up, how regional authorities are designed, and how levels of government work together.
• Community paramedicine and mobile integrated health: designing, running and measuring programs, and working with those who pay for them.
• EMS workforce sustainability: recruitment, retention, pay modeling, and how rural and volunteer systems behave.
• EMS data and analytics: the National Emergency Medical Services Information System (NEMSIS), electronic patient care report (ePCR) systems, map-based analysis, modeling how services are used, building dashboards.
• Financial sustainability and reimbursement: EMS billing, ground emergency medical transportation (GEMT) payment, alternative payment models, rural health finance.
• Policy and legislative development: state EMS laws, federal rural health programs, comments on proposed rules, and the means to develop public policy.
• International paramedicine systems: how countries compare in governance and in how they credential paramedics, and building systems in low- and middle-income settings.
• Program evaluation and applied research: measuring outcomes, mixed methods, implementation science, and evaluation designs set in advance and reported against the guidance that fits the claim.
• Software development and systems integration: TPF has used technology in its projects over the years. It aims to build its own technology capability over time. The areas closest to TPF’s mission start with full-stack work using health data standards. These include Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR), Health Level Seven (HL7) and admission, discharge and transfer (ADT) messages. They also include public safety and EMS links to computer-aided dispatch (CAD), geographic information systems (GIS) and ArcGIS, and Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B). Dashboards in Power BI, Tableau or custom platforms count, and so do enterprise management systems. Machine learning in health or public safety is a plus. TPF most wants to talk with people who could help shape what this capability becomes.

The list is a starting point. Your expertise may sit at the edge of what is known in this field without fitting any area above. If so, TPF wants to hear from you.

Staff and operational roles

As TPF grows, it is also building its operational staff. TPF filled its project manager position in September 2026. More operational needs may come as the project portfolio grows. You may have a background in nonprofit operations, in project management for consulting or research, or in grant and contract administration. If the mission draws you, TPF is open to that conversation too.