Kootenay Emergency Response Physicians Association - KERPA

06/16/2026

What are your plans for July 4th?

Join us at Whitewater for a meaningful day in the mountains as we honour the memory of Alex Zimich while raising awareness and funds for KERPA. 🥾

🎶 Enjoy live music from DJs Les Go and Charlie Holiday on the Hummingbird Lodge patio, plus a delicious alpine barbecue starting at 12:00 PM.🍔 It's a great opportunity to connect with our incredible community, support an important cause, and spend the day in the mountains.🏔️

Learn more and register:
https://buff.ly/WZck2yx

The Hummingbird Lodge is your home for outdoor adventure at Whitewater Ski Resort. It is situated on the edge of the resort boundary, providing front-door access to the area's expansive backcountry, both in summer and winter.

06/15/2026

A Note to Our Community.
KERPA is a registered Canadian charity. Our mission is simple: saving lives, helping critically ill and injured patients, and supporting the Emergency Services.
This page exists to share that mission with you — the people who support us, donate to us, volunteer alongside us, and who benefit from the care we provide. It is where we share our story — the people and the community that makes this work possible.
We have given careful thought to how we manage this page. Going forward, we will be moderating comments to ensure they remain focused on the charitable work and the patients we serve. Comments that are off-topic or that do not directly support the mission of this charity will be hidden.
We respect that there are broader conversations happening about pre-hospital care in British Columbia. Those conversations matter — and we encourage them in the right forums. Here, our focus remains on the patients and the community we serve. KERPA's page is here to celebrate the work of our team, our emergency services colleagues, and the community that makes it all possible.
If you have questions, concerns, or would like to engage with us directly, we genuinely welcome that. Please reach out:
📧 [email protected]
Our door is always open.

To the Kootenay community — thank you. Your support saves lives, and we do not take that for granted. Everything we do is for the patients who need us most, and we will continue to put them first in everything we share here.

KERPA is a Canadian Registered Charity, founded in 2016, with the goal of helping the most critically ill and injured patients in the Kootenay Region. We dispatch trained Emergency Response Physicians to immediate threat to life 911 calls, providing emergency critical care to patients and supporting...

06/12/2026

What does it cost the healthcare system to have a KERPA physician respond to a critical 911 call?

$0 to the patient. Ever.

KERPA is funded entirely by grants, public donations, and community sponsorship. Our physicians volunteer their time. We provide two fully equipped Emergency Response Vehicles — $600,000 in assets and infrastructure — to the Kootenay region at no operational cost to the province. While some clinical consumables used on patients may be replaced by the BCEHS, KERPA carries every upfront cost so the system never has to.
But cost is only part of the story. The more important question is: what does a physician actually bring to the scene that changes whether someone lives or dies?
When a KERPA emergency physician responds alongside paramedics, they bring capabilities that extend beyond most standard paramedic scope of practice:
🔴 Rapid Sequence Intubation (RSI) — definitive airway management in cardiac arrest, severe head injury, and respiratory failure, using medications available only to critical care paramedics
🔴 Point-of-care ultrasound — diagnosing internal bleeding, cardiac tamponade, or pneumothorax on scene in minutes, without waiting for hospital imaging
🔴 Advanced Cardiac Life Support equipment — transport ventilators, defibrillation, and advanced cardiac monitoring for the most critically ill patients
🔴 Complex sedation and pain management — procedural sedation for extrication, major trauma, and surgical interventions
🔴 Physician decision-making support — experienced clinical decision-maker on scene, supporting paramedic crews through the most complex, resource-intensive calls
KERPA physician do not replace paramedics — they stand alongside them for the calls where every additional capability matters most. These two professions are complementary, not competitive.
What do patients have to lose?
Thank you to the community that makes this possible. You are saving lives. ❤️
Support our mission: www.kerpa.org

06/11/2026

Physician-paramedic teams save lives.

In January 2025, researchers at the University of British Columbia published the largest meta-analysis ever conducted on physician-led prehospital care:

📊 Lavery, Aulakh & Christian (2025)
Scandinavian Journal of Trauma, Resuscitation and Emergency Medicine
332,533 patients | 23 peer-reviewed studies
➡️ 20% reduction in mortality (AOR 0.80; 95% CI 0.68–0.91; p=0.001)
➡️ 49% increase in survival (AOR 1.49; 95% CI 1.31–1.69; p

06/11/2026

A huge shout-out and heartfelt Thank You to Right Touch Auto for giving ERV2 a top-to-bottom professional cleaning last week. They did an absolutely amazing job!

Our Emergency Response Vehicles are much more than just vehicles — they are mobile critical care units carrying some of the most advanced pre-hospital medical equipment available. On board, our physicians have access to portable ultrasound, advanced cardiac monitors, automated chest compression devices, tactical medical equipment, medications for roadside general anesthesia, advanced surgical equipment, chest tubes, and much more.

This equipment allows KERPA physicians to bring hospital-level interventions directly to the scene of some of the most critically ill and injured patients in our region, helping save lives and supporting our emergency services partners when every second counts.

KERPA is proud to be Canada's first accredited physician-led special operations medical retrieval service. Our ability to provide this level of care is made possible through the incredible support of our communities and local businesses.

Thank you, Right Touch Auto, for helping us keep ERV2 looking its best and ready to respond when the call comes.

06/10/2026

We are pleased to announce that the KERPA 2025 Annual Report is now publicly available at
www.kerpa.org

The Kootenay Emergency Response Physicians Association remains committed to delivering excellence in emergency and pre-hospital care in the Kootenay region. This report highlights our progress, our people, and our ongoing dedication to the communities we serve. Thank you also to all the emergency services who we work alongside.

We extend our sincere gratitude to every individual and organisation who supports our mission — your contribution makes a real difference in people's lives.

📄 Read the full report at
www.kerpa.org

KERPA is a Canadian Registered Charity, founded in 2016, with the goal of helping the most critically ill and injured patients in the Kootenay Region. We dispatch trained Emergency Response Physicians to immediate threat to life 911 calls, providing emergency critical care to patients and supporting...

06/10/2026

Some have said physicians responding to 911 calls "makes no difference."

Here's what the rest of the world calls it: the standard of care.

🌍 Germany has nearly 1,300 dedicated physician response stations — emergency doctors deployed to the field in rapid response vehicles since the 1960s. (Source: BAND National Survey, 2022)

🇫🇷 France operates 540+ physician-staffed SAMU units, with doctors dispatched to the most critical emergencies as standard protocol to support the emergency services.

🇬🇧 In the United Kingdom, hundreds of volunteer BASICS doctors (British Association for Immediate Care) respond to 999 calls in support of ambulance crews — a model running since 1977. London's Air Ambulance operates a dedicated Physician Response Unit treating over 3,300 patients per year by car alone.

🇺🇸 In the United States, university-affiliated physician response programs are expanding rapidly:

Penn Med 1 (Lancaster, PA) — physician response vehicle
University of Pittsburgh EMS — 24/7 physician response with residents and fellows
University of New Mexico — state-approved physician field response agency
St. Luke's EMS Response Team (Bethlehem, PA)
MD1 Program - Rockford, Northern Illinois

🇳🇿 New Zealand's PRIME scheme deploys rural GPs to medical emergencies in partnership with St John Ambulance. Along with HEMS team physician response.

🇦🇺 Australia's CareFlight, Sydney HEMS and retrieval services deploy physicians to trauma scenes nationally.

🇿🇦 South Africa operates physician-staffed HEMS through services like ER24 and Netcare 911.

🇨🇦 And right here in Canada:

TEAMS — physician SAR prehospital response
North Shore Rescue — physician-supported mountain rescue
KERPA — CAMTS-accredited physician ground response in the Kootenays
STARS - HEMS prehospital response with physicians

This is not an anomaly. This is not an experiment. This is how the developed world delivers critical care to the sickest patients before they reach a hospital.

Over 25 countries. Thousands of physician stations. Exposed to peer-reviewed scrutiny for over 60 years.

What's wrong is ignoring this evidence.

📖 Read our 2025 Community Report coming out soon: www.kerpa.org

Reference: BAND/Rettungsmagazin National Survey of Notarzt Stations, July 2022 — https://www.rettungsmagazin.de/news/knapp-1-300-notarztstandorte-in-deutschland-68642

06/07/2026

🇯🇲🎶 CASTLEGAR — ARE YOU READY FOR A TASTE OF JAMAICA? 🌴🍗

Join us for an incredible day of authentic Jamaican food, live music, culture, and community at Can Jam Link Up on Sunday June 28th! Enjoy delicious cuisine, great entertainment, local vendors, and a fun family-friendly atmosphere at Millennium Park in Castlegar. The event celebrates Jamaican culture while raising funds and awareness for KERPA and other local charities.

Bring your friends, bring your family, and come enjoy a day filled with amazing food, music, and community spirit — all while supporting important local causes.

🎟️ Get your tickets here: https://buff.ly/o6jpN4z

🇯🇲❤️🚑

06/06/2026

🏔️ Who doesn’t love a day in the mountains at Whitewater Ski Resort?

It’s just as breathtaking in July as it is in the winter! ☀️🌲

Join us at Whitewater for Alex’s Whitewater Climb for KERPA — a meaningful day of hiking, community, and support for critical emergency response care in the Kootenays. ❤️

Come challenge yourself, enjoy the incredible scenery, and help make a difference close to home.

🎶 DJs on the Hummingbird Lodge patio
🌭 Barbecue in the alpine
❤️ Community coming together for an incredible cause

The Hummingbird Lodge is your home for outdoor adventure at Whitewater Ski Resort. It is situated on the edge of the resort boundary, providing front-door access to the area's expansive backcountry, both in summer and winter.