Plain and simple. EMS is Health care. Despite the fact that many of the services are included with the municipal services, they are still a integral part of the total health care system. We face many of the same challenges that hospitals feel with pressures on quality, choice, payor reform and performance measures. We also deal with heavy government regulations (granted I feel many of these are necessary to guarantee public safety), tax concerns and severe public scrutiny.
In effort to give full disclosure I am a current employee of a private ambulance company that does both emergent and non-emergent ambulance work in the greater Boston, MA area. The start of this Blog is to open a forum for discussion in the EMS field on health care reform, EMS regulations and the need for a national standard as well as any other topic of interest that relates to our field and the interaction we have with other areas of Health care.
