New NEMSAC Board Gets Right Down to Business
They got sworn in, and then they went straight to work. That’s what happened when the new members of the National EMS Advisory Council (NEMSAC) got together for their first hybrid (in-person and online) meeting on May 10-11, 2023. The in-person meeting was held at the Embassy Suites Hotel at the Chevy Chase Pavilion in Washington, DC.
According to EMS.gov, “The NEMSAC consists of 25 members of the EMS community who represent different aspects of the profession. The members are appointed by the Secretary of the Department of Transportation for two-year terms, and each may serve up to two terms.”
Here’s what NEMSAC’s members are working on right now through their subcommittees. Such was their eagerness to get going that the reports were given by each subcommittee’s acting chairs. They were only ratified as official chairs following their reports.
Crash Scene Safety
Carol Jorgensen, EMS program manager for the Nebraska Department of Public Health’s Office of Emergency Health Systems, gave a Professional Safety Subcommittee report. Hers was short and to the point. “The Professional Safety subcommittee has one advisory in the research phase right now, which is Crash Scene Safety for EMS Responders,” said Jorgensen. “The subcommittee’s members are considering expanding the scope of this advisory to include crash scene safety for “all individuals on scene, not just the EMS responders.” They would also like to look into helicopter landing zone best practices.
Ensuring Compliance with the Controlled Substance Law
Tom Arkins, a paramedic with Indianapolis EMS in Indiana, reported that his Integration and Technology Subcommittee has two items on its agenda. The first is to create a course for EMS data managers to train them how to understand and use EMS data/research to improve their operations. The second is to develop EMS guidelines for complying with the Protecting Patient Access to Emergency Medications Act of 2017. This effort is aimed at building “a common framework or structure where people can find out what they need to do to get a DEA license for their controlled substances, and make sure that they're following all the right rules,” he said.
Improving Access to 9-1-1 Services
NEMSAC’s Preparedness and Education Subcommittee is also working on two projects, according to Lisa Basgall, director of Rice University EMS in Houston, TX. The first is focused on improving 9-1-1 response for EMS patients through a variety of means, including Next Generation 9-1-1 (NG911) services, along with “recognizing telecommunicators as first responders and not secretarial staff,” said Basgall. “Also in research right now is our advisory on large-scale incidents and preparedness (for) pre-planned and unplanned events.”
Equal EMS Everywhere
The Equitable Patient Care Subcommittee is living up to its name by working on a draft advisory concerning “equitable access to EMS regardless of population density,” said Dr. Jason McMullan, associate professor and director of EMS at the University of Cincinnati School of Medicine. “The overarching goal of this advisory is to better describe and quantify the challenges and perhaps even the health care deserts, so to speak, that are faced by rural participants,” he said.
Improving EMS Finances
Many EMS agencies are feeling the economic pinch, and NEMSAC’s Sustainability & Efficiency Subcommittee wants to ease their pain. To make this happen, they’re working on an advisory titled The Annual State of EMS System Financing, said Paul Brennan, director of prehospital emergency medical services at Lawrence General Hospital in Lawrence, MA.
“The purpose of the advisory is to take the previous body of work that articulated and highlighted EMS financing challenges and put it into a more workable document that can be updated on an every two-year basis,” Brennan explained. “There are 11 or 12 individual recommendations as part of that advisory that speak to topics such as the government preparing an EMS toolkit on financing that individual departments and services can use.”
Improving Paramedic Professional Recognition
The Adaptability & Innovation Subcommittee is discussing the proposed designation of graduate-prepared paramedics as federally recognized practitioners, said David Fifer, assistant professor of emergency medical care and director of the paramedic degree program at Eastern Kentucky University.
“This advisory would call for the establishment of master of science of paramedic academic programs as basically a prehospital-focused equivalent to master of science and physician assistant studies or master of science and nursing types of programs, to prepare a new kind of paramedic to function as a true practitioner,” said Fifer. “It furthermore would call on relevant federal entities, including CMS and Secretary of Transportation, Secretary of Health and Human Services, to designate those individuals as practitioners under federal law and regulations.”
Collecting Ambulance Crash Data
NEMSAC’s Ad Hoc Ambulance MVC Subcommittee exists for one reason: To develop a “Comprehensive National Ambulance Crash Data Collection platform to better understand current crashes and guide future preventative strategies,” said Mark Gestring, medical director of the Kessler Trauma Center and chief of acute care surgery at the University of Rochester in Rochester, NY. This effort is being driven by “the fact that there are currently no national safety standards for ambulances,” he said. Lacking such data, “there's currently no real way to answer the question of how often are these ambulances crashing and how is it affecting the occupants and other people involved.”
This subcommittee’s advisory is “calling for a development of a national ambulance crash data collection platform defined by the EMS professionals involved in this work,” said Gestring. Once this advisory has been issued, this subcommittee “will cease to exist,” he said.
James Careless is a frequent contributor to EMS World.
Comments
As a paramedic that has provided prehospital emergency, urgent, and primary care, and one who has an NPI number as a recognized practitioner under CMS, this can be done without a Masters Degree, as it’s already being done. Consider reviewing AFI 44-103. It’s a 570+ hour didactic with an ongoing physician preceptorship. We’re using it across the globe. EMS is behind the ball.
—James Pennington