American Ambulance Association Hosts 2016 Annual Conference

Culminating in an awards ceremony on election night, the American Ambulance Association held its annual conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, on November 6-9, 2016. The ceremony included the transition in leadership from Mike Hall of Nature Coast EMS to Mark Postma of Paramedics Plus. Other elected officers include Aarron Reinert of Lakes Region EMS as president elect, Shawn Baird of Woodburn Ambulance Service as treasurer, and Randy Strozyk, senior vice president of operations at AMR as secretary.

This year’s AMBY Awards for excellence in EMS included the Best Quality Improvement Program going to Gold Cross in Salt Lake City, Utah, for their documentation improvement project, and to EmergyCare in Erie, Pennsylvania for their EMS Academy program. Innovative keynote sessions included programs by political analyst Charlie Cook on political forecasting, as well as Shawn Achor on the science behind happiness. This innovative and dynamic session demonstrated how and why positive psychology can dramatically change individual and organizational behavior.

AAA also gave awards for numerous individual contributions and achievements, most notably to Julie Rose of Community Care Ambulance in Ashtabula, Ohio. Rose received the Robert L. Forbuss Lifetime Achievement Award for her contributions to the AAA, including holding the positions of membership committee chair, region III director and alternate director.

Numerous other educational sessions were offered on a wide variety of topics relevant to the EMS industry. One of those sessions, led by industry-leading reimbursement attorney Brian Werfel, Esq., discussed the current state of Medicare reimbursement and related issues. Werfel noted that the prior authorization program, only currently implemented in three states for BLS non-emergency calls, resulted in a 14% reduction overall in allowed transports nationwide. The local MAC has enormous control over how this is implemented, and it is expected that we will see an expansion of this program based on the impacts it has seen so far.

Werfel discussed other major changes to the Medicare system, including the final rule on overpayment reporting, the potential expansion of the moratorium on new Medicare providers, and the growing delays in the Medicare appeals system. All of these issues present significant challenges to EMS providers in obtaining timely reimbursement for services while navigating to avoid liability.

Another topic of significance to EMS providers across the country was discussed by Dr. Dan Patterson of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Patterson covered the evidence-based guidelines under development for fatigue risk management, a rapidly growing concern in the industry. Patterson noted that 50% of responders self-report fatigue due to limited sleep and poor-quality sleep, which is the best indicator presently because there is no true test for fatigue right now.

Amazingly, Patterson noted that fatigue was the most important factor that was predictive or associative of negative outcomes. Fatigue led to 1.9 times greater odds of injury, 2.2 times greater odds of an adverse clinical event and 3.9 times greater odds of safety compromising behavior. Based on this risk analysis, Patterson is pending publication in 2017 of a study on this topic jointly by NAEMSO and NHSTA. Visit www.emsfatigue.org to get more information or submit comments.

The American Ambulance Association was formed in 1979 to promote improvements in the emergency medical services industry and represents hundreds of ambulances services across the country. The AAA “serves as a voice and clearinghouse for ambulance services, and views prehospital care not only as a public service, but also as an essential part of the total public health care system.”

Matthew R. Streger, Esq., MPA, NRP, is a member of the EMS World editorial advisory board as well as the law firm Keavney & Streger in Princeton, NJ. He has more than 30 years of experience in EMS in a wide variety of roles and locations.