Specialty Care Transport Meeting

CouncilBuilding

Room # 201

September 1, 2010

Attendees:

Doug Swanson, CarolinasMedicalCenter

Dr. Hugh Tilson, North CarolinaHospital Association

Jeff White, North Carolina Association of EMS Administrators

Reid McCormick, GuildfordCountyEMS

Linwood Jones, North Carolina Hospital Association

Drexdal Pratt, Division of Health Service Regulation

ReginaGodette-Crawford, North Carolina Office of EMS

Tom Mitchell, North Carolina Office of EMS

Nadine Pfeiffer, North Carolina Office of EMS

Donnie Sides, North Carolina Office of EMS

Danny Harbinson, North Carolina Office of EMS

Ann Marie Brown, North Carolina Office of EMS

McKenzie Cook, North Carolina Office of EMS

The meeting started at 1:08 p.m.

  1. The State talked about trying to get away from the specialty care connection and it is clearly defined in the rule however, this is not the issue this time we are focusing on ground ambulance and specialty care.
  2. Thought about creating a new rule to encompass the new “animal” for a type or level of service, this would give counties the opportunity to contract and it would be a clearly defined level of service.
  3. North Carolina has convalescent, ground ambulance, Specialty Care ground ambulance and, air medical and what we are looking at would be more like an inter-facility patient discharge level
  4. This is basically defining it as something between ground service and specialty care and if the county wanted to provide service for their county they could contract with a service, in which they can transfer patient back home, inter-facility and it would be a clearly defined opportunity for counties to be able to work towards.

This will be an ALS and the same definition from an EMS stand point and the equipment, staff and anything from a paramedic or above. Most places are already doing the inter facility transport; we are trying to put it into rule so that it will be accurate and legit.

What we are going to do is what is best for the patient, and the continuum of care. We may be able to come up with some sort of level that we can From a regulatory level it will be easier to create another rule rather than embed a new rule in a current rule.

It was discussed that the next meeting will be a conference call. Meeting was adjourned at 2:30 p.m.