Regional Planning Is Imperative

Q&A with Connie Meyer, President,National Association of EMTs; Captain, Johnson Co. Med-Act (Kan.)

Coming out of 9/11, what did you see as the greatest needs for EMS in its preparedness for terrorism and major MCIs?

   It was a wake-up call for all of us. I think it was hard for some people to get their minds around the fact that we might not be safe or welcome on scenes--that someone might try to hurt us. And I think it became clear that we weren't really prepared to deal with mass casualties, and having that many patients at a time, and we were not ready to deal with our own losses of the magnitude we experienced that day.

How would you evaluate our preparedness efforts over the last 10 years?

   A lot of EMS agencies have made and improved their plans for what to do in catastrophic situations. There has been some help from the federal government to obtain equipment and training for those things. But I don't think we're as prepared as we need to be yet. There are a number of agencies that still don't have the proper equipment and training to deal with those kinds of situations.

What's changed the most for you locally there in Johnson County?

   Well, even before 2001 we were doing mass-casualty drills. So we just magnified those a bit, and we were able to get appropriate equipment--monitoring equipment and protective gear and things like that--through grants. We're fortunate to be a government-based service; that gives us an advantage in getting grants and equipment and training that some private and hospital-based ambulances don't have. There's still a disconnect on that.

In this tough economy, how should we go about sustaining what we've achieved?

   The only way we can sustain what we've achieved is to continue to advocate for protecting our level of preparedness. I don't think we can focus completely on 9/11-type disasters; we have disasters every day in communities across the country. I live in a town of 300 people, so for a small service like mine, a mass-casualty situation might be a big accident with 10 patients, because that would really tax our resources.

   But every service has to have a plan to deal with those situations, and I think you have to depend on your neighbors to help you. I don't think it's realistic that any service can handle any major incident without mutual aid. We can't live in that bubble anymore, thinking we're the only ones who can take care of our county, and we're never going to need help.

What should be our top priorities?

   There are actually some parts coming up in the field EMS bill, when it gets reintroduced, that provide funding to the states to do regional planning and response. That's going to help. But at the basic level, it's incumbent on local EMS agencies to develop whatever plans work the best for them in their circumstances. And with the way the economy is now, we have to be as self-sufficient as possible.