Over the past two years, the city of McKinney, Texas, has significantly improved cardiac arrest survival rates through a coordinated effort between its fire and police departments—and, now, its citizens.
Two years ago, if your heart stopped in McKinney, your chances of surviving were just 10 percent, the same as many U.S. cities. Today, that survival rate has skyrocketed to 47 percent—thanks to an unprecedented partnership between the McKinney Fire Department and McKinney Police Department.
Officials say the program is modeled in part after practices used in Seattle and, so far, McKinney’s success rate has risen way above the national average of 30 percent, and closing in on Seattle’s leading survival rate of 50%…