Rural-Frontier EMS Technical Assistance Center Contract Awarded

Earthtalk Studios and the Critical Illness and Trauma Foundation of Bozeman, MT, have been awarded a $500,000 federal contract from the Office of Rural Health Policy to establish the Rural Emergency Medical Services and Trauma Technical Assistance Center (REMSTTAC). The center will serve as a national focal point for the dissemination of information on rural and frontier emergency medical services and trauma care. A key feature will be an interactive website slated to become an online national resource.

"The purpose of the center is to field calls and requests for information from agencies and individuals involved in rural and frontier EMS and trauma care," says its director, Nels D. Sanddal. "We anticipate developing resources that will tackle broad policy issues such as funding rural EMS and also develop and/or identify materials of a much more practical nature to local EMS agencies. Our primary audience will be key decision-makers at federal, state and maybe regional levels, but that certainly doesn't exclude our secondary audience, which is local EMS agency directors and individual EMS providers."

Working with Earthtalk Studios, which is an award-winning multimedia and website design firm, REMSTTAC sees the web portal as one of the site's strengths, says Sanddal.

"We expect the website to be very interactive and yet accommodate the low bandwidths that are still dominant in some rural areas of the country."

Callers will be able to access information on topics like reimbursement and educational materials, says Sanddal. "Financing is an issue in rural EMS," he says. "Some of it relates to reimbursement policies from various third-party payers, including the federal government, and some relates to the need to look for unique solutions on how to better integrate EMS into the broader healthcare or public safety community. For example, rural EMS agencies that are formally aligned with critical access hospitals are reimbursed in a different formula than those that are freestanding and separate. There are limitations on how you can affiliate with a critical access hospital. There is a '35-mile rule,' which means if there is another ambulance service within 35 miles of your door, you are not eligible for this particular configuration, which is very beneficial from a financial standpoint. There are legislative changes pending in Congress to modify that 35-mile rule and allow more EMS agencies to become aligned if they choose to do so. I can see a whole rash of requests from both critical access hospital administrators and local EMS agency personnel asking about the benefits and/or downsides, and having the materials prepared in anticipation of those questions will help us serve a lot of people's needs."

Another way REMSTTAC plans to assist rural communities is with continuing education, says Sanddal. "I anticipate that we'll get requests from individual rural providers who don't have access to a broad range of continuing education activities, and we might be able to point them in the direction of self-study programs or other resources to help them meet their CE."

The REMSTTAC expects to be fully operational within three months. For more information, contact Nels Sanddal at 406/585-2659.

-MN