Texas City Raises Cardiac Survival Rate from 10% to 47%

Two years ago, if your heart stopped in McKinney, Texas, you had just a 10% chance of survival. Today, you have a 47% chance of making it home to your family.

The transformation started when Fire Battalion Chief Ben Jones sent a team to Seattle's Resuscitation Academy in late 2024. They came back with a simple but powerful plan: get defibrillators closer to people and train more hands to use them.

McKinney placed over 80 automated external defibrillators in every police patrol car across the city. Officers who were initially skeptical became true believers after reviving their first cardiac arrest victims.

The strategy works because time is everything. Every minute without care cuts survival odds by 10%. By putting AEDs in police vehicles already patrolling neighborhoods, McKinney slashed response times dramatically.

The results speak louder than any plan. Nine McKinney residents walked away from cardiac arrests in the past year alone. The city's 47% survival rate now towers above the national average of 30% and nearly matches Seattle's leading rate of 50%.

A friendly rivalry between fire and police teams created a culture shift that saved lives. "It's a really interesting shift in mindset for police officers, and they bought into it," Fire Chief Paul Dow told local media.

The Ripple Effect

McKinney isn't stopping with first responders. The city just launched its Neighborhood Heroes campaign, distributing 200 AEDs directly into residential areas with trained citizen volunteers ready to respond.

The goal is bold: become one of America's first "4-Minute Cities" where no cardiac emergency is ever more than four minutes from a defibrillator. In a medical crisis where seconds determine whether someone lives or dies, that promise means everything.

The American Heart Association took notice. They selected McKinney's model to represent their Heart Health Month campaign this February, showcasing how one mid-sized city is rewriting the survival odds for cardiac patients nationwide.

Other cities are already asking how to replicate McKinney's success, turning a local innovation into a national movement that could save thousands of lives every year.