Organizational policies

Publishing principles

TPF publishes policy briefs, commissioned system evaluation reports, peer-reviewed journal articles, and the Governing Care newsletter — all accessible in the TPF publications library. TPF’s publishing work is governed by the following principles.

Evidence grounding. All claims in TPF publications are grounded in verifiable evidence. TPF does not publish assertions it cannot support with data, peer-reviewed literature, or direct field observation. Where evidence is limited or contested, TPF says so explicitly.

Citation standards. TPF publications follow APA 7th edition citation standards. TPF does not fabricate citations. Where a source cannot be verified, the claim it supports is removed rather than softened or hedged.

Commissioned work disclosure. Reports commissioned by state agencies, county governments, or other clients are identified as commissioned work. The commissioning organization does not control editorial content. Where a client has requested confidentiality about specific findings, that constraint is disclosed in the publication.

Audience. TPF publishes for practitioners, policymakers, and researchers working in EMS, rural health, and public health governance. TPF does not publish for general consumer audiences, and its work is not intended as individual medical or legal advice.

Independence. Editorial decisions on what TPF publishes — including in Governing Care — are made by TPF principals without approval from funders, clients, or partner organizations. Advertising is not accepted on TPF platforms.

Ownership and funding

The Paramedic Foundation is an independent Minnesota nonprofit corporation and a tax-exempt charity under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. EIN: 46-3271401. TPF has no parent organization and is not a subsidiary of any other entity.

Governance. TPF is governed by a volunteer Board of Directors. The board sets organizational direction, approves major financial decisions, and ensures alignment with the organization’s charitable mission. Board composition is disclosed on the Team page.

Revenue sources. TPF’s revenue comes from consulting and evaluation contracts with state EMS offices, regional advisory bodies, county governments, hospital systems, and federal grant-funded projects. TPF does not receive advertising revenue and does not sell personal data. A small portion of revenue comes from speaking engagements and technical assistance work.

Grants and federal funding. TPF principals have worked on federally funded initiatives under contracts with NHTSA, HRSA, and other federal agencies. Where federal funding supports a specific deliverable, that relationship is disclosed in the relevant publication or report.

Conflicts of interest. TPF principals are required to disclose potential conflicts of interest relevant to consulting engagements and publications. Where a conflict exists or could reasonably be perceived, it is disclosed in the relevant work product.

Feedback and transparency policy

TPF is accountable to the communities, agencies, and practitioners its work is intended to serve. TPF takes feedback seriously and has no interest in protecting inaccurate or outdated work.

How to reach TPF. Questions, corrections, and substantive feedback on any TPF publication or deliverable can be directed to info@paramedicfoundation.org. Please include the publication title, the specific claim or passage at issue, and the nature of your concern.

Response commitment. TPF will acknowledge substantive feedback within 10 business days. Where a concern raises a factual issue, TPF investigates and responds with its findings. TPF does not guarantee that every disagreement will result in a change, but it commits to engaging with evidence-based challenges on their merits.

Public accountability. Where TPF work has informed legislation, regulatory decisions, or organizational policy, TPF considers itself accountable to the public affected by those decisions — not only to the client who commissioned the work.

Corrections policy

TPF maintains a standing commitment to correcting errors in its published work. This policy applies to policy briefs, reports, Governing Care newsletter issues, and any other content published under the TPF name or by TPF principals in their TPF capacity.

Factual errors. If a published claim is factually incorrect, TPF will issue a correction. Corrections are appended to the original document or newsletter issue with a clearly marked correction notice identifying the original claim, the correct information, and the date of correction. TPF does not silently edit published work.

Analytical errors. If a methodological error affects a report’s findings, TPF will issue a revised version of the document with a change log identifying what was revised and why. Where a commissioned client’s decisions were informed by the flawed analysis, TPF notifies the client directly.

Journal articles. For peer-reviewed articles published in external journals, including the International Journal of Paramedicine, corrections follow the relevant journal’s corrections policy. TPF will cooperate fully with any journal’s correction or retraction process.

Scope. This policy does not apply to opinion pieces or analytical commentary where the disagreement is interpretive rather than factual. Reasonable people can draw different conclusions from the same evidence. This policy addresses errors of fact and methodology, not differences of professional judgment.

To report a potential error, contact info@paramedicfoundation.org.

Ethics policy

The Paramedic Foundation holds its principals, board members, and consultant subject matter experts to explicit standards of professional and organizational conduct. These standards are not aspirational — they describe how TPF operates and what obligations TPF accepts when it takes on consulting engagements, publishes work, or represents the organization in public forums.

Integrity of work product. TPF does not tailor findings to satisfy client preferences. When a system evaluation reveals structural dysfunction, an unsustainable financial model, or governance failures, TPF reports those findings clearly and completely. Clients engage TPF for an accurate picture of their situation, not a favorable one. Principals who believe a client is pressuring them to alter findings are expected to disclose that pressure to the board and, if necessary, to decline the engagement.

TPF does not publish work it cannot defend on methodological grounds. Where data are limited, where evidence is contested, or where conclusions rest on professional judgment rather than demonstrable fact, those limitations are stated explicitly in the work product. Certainty is not performed where it does not exist.

Conflicts of interest. TPF principals disclose any financial, professional, or personal relationship that could reasonably be perceived to influence their work on a given engagement or publication. Disclosure is required before the work begins, not after a concern is raised. Where a conflict is determined to be material, the principal recuses from the relevant work. The board maintains final authority over conflict determinations.

TPF does not accept consulting engagements from organizations whose interests are directly adverse to communities or agencies TPF is simultaneously serving. Where an apparent conflict emerges mid-engagement, all affected parties are notified and the board determines the appropriate course of action.

Use of position and credentials. Principals represent their TPF roles accurately and do not claim organizational endorsement for positions that are their own. The Paramedic Foundation name and reputation are not used to advance personal commercial interests, political positions, or the interests of organizations outside the scope of a disclosed TPF engagement.

Academic credentials, clinical licensure, and professional certifications claimed in connection with TPF work must be current and accurately represented. TPF does not tolerate credential misrepresentation.

Confidentiality. TPF handles client data, organizational records, and information disclosed in the course of an engagement with strict confidentiality. Information obtained through a consulting relationship is not used for any purpose outside that engagement without explicit client consent. This obligation survives the conclusion of the engagement.

Where a consulting engagement involves access to patient data, protected health information, or personally identifiable information, TPF complies fully with applicable federal and state law, including HIPAA where applicable.

Public conduct. TPF principals are expected to conduct themselves with professional integrity in all public forums, including academic conferences, legislative settings, media appearances, and online platforms. Disagreements with other organizations or individuals are addressed through evidence and argument, not through misrepresentation, personal attack, or the abuse of institutional position.

TPF engages in good faith with criticism of its work. Principals do not use the organization’s platform to retaliate against individuals or organizations who raise legitimate concerns.

Accountability. Concerns about potential violations of this policy may be directed to the board of directors at info@paramedicfoundation.org. The board will review concerns on their merits and respond within 15 business days. Where a violation is substantiated, the board will determine appropriate remediation, up to and including ending a principal’s or consultant’s relationship with TPF.

Diversity policy

The Paramedic Foundation’s work spans rural Montana and frontier Alaska, urban California and the Canadian Maritimes, Aboriginal communities in the Australian interior and village health programs in the Aleutian Islands. TPF principals have built careers in contexts as different as a big-city public health department and a one-paramedic county covering thousands of square miles of frontier. That range is not incidental. It is the foundation of what makes the analytical work credible.

TPF holds a specific and considered view of diversity: that the most durable insights in EMS policy and system design come from people who have lived and worked inside the systems they are analyzing. Book-learning about rural EMS fragility is not the same as having responded to a cardiac arrest 45 minutes from the nearest hospital. A governance framework that works in a dense suburban system will not automatically translate to a frontier system where the paramedic is also the fire chief and the school bus driver. Experience generates knowledge that credentials alone cannot replicate.

Diversity of lived and professional experience. TPF actively seeks principals and consultants whose backgrounds span different system types, care environments, regulatory contexts, and communities. This includes rural, frontier, and urban practice environments; paid, combination, and volunteer agency structures; tribal and indigenous health systems; and EMS governance models across the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Ireland. It includes physicians, nurses, paramedics, public health professionals, geographers, financial analysts, and policy researchers, because the problems TPF addresses cannot be solved from within any single discipline.

TPF recognizes that different communities have different experiences of emergency care access, and that those differences are not randomly distributed. Communities that have been historically underserved by EMS systems bring specific knowledge about what those systems fail to do and why. That knowledge is analytically valuable and organizationally important. TPF does not treat the perspectives of underserved communities as ancillary to the work — they are often the sharpest diagnostic lens available.

Diversity of professional and policy opinion. EMS governance, scope of practice, workforce structure, and financing are genuinely contested domains. Reasonable, experienced practitioners hold meaningfully different views on paramedicine professionalization, the appropriate boundaries of community paramedicine, the role of medical direction, and the relationship between EMS and the broader health system. TPF does not impose internal orthodoxy on these questions. TPF principals are expected to follow evidence and argue from it, but disagreement among principals on contested professional questions is a feature of intellectual seriousness, not a problem to be managed.

TPF engages with international models precisely because they challenge the assumptions embedded in any single system. What works in Renfrew County challenges what is assumed to be necessary in rural Ohio. What Alaska’s Community Health Aide Program has demonstrated for six decades challenges what is assumed to be impossible in the continental United States. Exposure to different models of care delivery is not merely a courtesy to other systems — it is essential to doing this work well.

Inclusion in practice. TPF does not discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law in its selection of board members, principals, consultants, or collaborators. Engagement decisions are based on relevant expertise, professional track record, and alignment with TPF’s mission.

TPF recognizes that the EMS profession has historically been shaped by demographic patterns that do not reflect the communities it serves, and that professional organizations in this space have sometimes reproduced those patterns. TPF does not regard this history as irrelevant. TPF is a small organization with a limited ability to single-handedly reshape the profession’s demographics, and it is committed to not perpetuating exclusionary patterns in its own work and partnerships.

A note on editorial content. Diversity of perspective in TPF’s published work means engaging seriously with evidence and arguments that challenge prevailing assumptions, including TPF’s own. TPF does not publish only work that confirms what it already believes, and does not avoid difficult findings because they complicate preferred narratives. The goal of the publishing work is accuracy, not comfort.

These policies were adopted in April 2026 and apply to all TPF work product, consulting engagements, and public communications from that date forward. Questions may be directed to info@paramedicfoundation.org.