Texas EMS Org Leverages Pulsara to Manage Pre-Planned Events

How CHI St. Joseph Health EMS Triaged 150+ Patients a Day at One of Texas’s Largest Festivals

When hundreds of thousands of people descend on a single event over just eight weekends, things are bound to get chaotic. For years, CHI St. Joseph Health EMS has been the go-to medical provider for the Texas Renaissance Festival—but in 2023, that almost changed.

Initially told they wouldn’t be providing care for the festival that year, the St. Joseph Health team stepped back. But just a month before opening weekend, they got the call: the alternative provider wasn’t equipped to handle the high volume of the event. With more than 40,000 daily attendees on the line, CHI St. Joseph Health EMS stepped up on short notice.

“Of course,” said Billy Rice, Market Director of EMS and Air Med 12. “It’s our people and our county, so we stepped up and pulled it off.”

The challenge? Managing, tracking, and documenting hundreds of patient encounters per day in the middle of a high-volume, fast-moving event. Traditional paper methods weren’t going to cut it. Instead, CHI St. Joseph Health EMS turned to Pulsara.

By combining Pulsara with Texas’s emergency wristband system, the team created a unified way to triage and keep track of patients during the event. The result: real-time situational awareness, streamlined communication, and the ability to scale up fast for any incident—including over 200 patients at a single concert.

Download the case study to see exactly how they did it—and how your team can prepare for large-scale events with confidence.