EASTERN SHORE EMS

A Sub-Council of the Tidewater Emergency Medical Services Council, Inc.

Serving Accomack and Northampton Counties 

The purposes of this organization shall be to coordinate Emergency Medical Services of the Accomack-Northampton County area and to cooperate with such local and regional organizations as may be appropriate. ESEMSC subscribes to the following goals of an emergency medical services system and will seek to promote them: 

1. To establish an emergency medical services system which provides for arrangement of personnel, facilities, and equipment for the effective and coordinated delivery of health care services in the designated geographical area under emergency conditions.
2. To administer the emergency medical services system which will include an adequate number of health professionals, allied health professionals, and other health personnel, including ambulance personnel, with appropriate training and experience.
3. To provide for its personnel appropriate training (including clinical training) and continuing education programs which are coordinated with other programs in the system’s service area which provide similar training and education.
4. To join the personnel, facilities, and equipment of the system by a central communications system so that requests for emergency health care services will be handled by a communications facility which utilizes emergency medical telephonic screening; utilizes a centralized telephone number; and will have direct communication connections and interconnections with the personnel, facilities, and equipment of the system and with other appropriate emergency medical services systems.
5. To include an adequate number of necessary ground, air, and water vehicles and other transportation facilities to meet the individual characteristics of the system’s service area.
6. To include an adequate number of easily accessible emergency medical services facilities within the system area which are collectively capable of providing services on a continuous basis, which have appropriate nonduplicative and categorized capabilities, which meet appropriate standards relating to capacity, location, personnel, and equipment, and which are coordinated with other healthcare facilities in the system.
7. To provide access (including appropriate transportation) to specialized critical medical care units in the system’s service area, or, if there are no such units or an inadequate number of them in such area, provide access to such units in neighboring areas if access to such units is feasible in terms of time and distance.
8. To provide for the effective utilization of the appropriate personnel, facilities, and equipment of each public safety agency providing emergency services in the system’s service area.
9. To operate in a manner that provides persons who reside in the system’s service area and who have no professional training or financial interest in the provision of health care with an adequate opportunity to provide input.
10. To provide, without prior inquiry as to ability to pay, necessary emergency medical services to all patients requiring such services.
11. To provide for transfer of patients to facilities and programs which offer such follow-up care and rehabilitation as is necessary to effect the maximum recovery by the patient; provided, that the system shall provide a method or assuring that such transfers are consistent with accepted medical practice to serve the best interests of the patient and are not based on financial considerations alone.
12. To provide for a standardized patient recordkeeping system, which records shall cover the treatment of the patient from initial entry into the system through his discharge from it, and shall be consistent with ensuing patient records used in follow-up care and rehabilitation of the patient.
13. To provide programs of public education and information in the system’s service area (taking into account the needs of visitors to, as well as residents of, that area to know or be able to learn immediately the means of obtaining emergency medical services) which programs stress the general dissemination of information regarding appropriate methods of medical self-help and first-aid and regarding the availability of first-aid training programs in the area.
14. To provide for a comprehensive self-evaluation of the extent and quality of the emergency health care services provided in the system’s service area.
15. To have a plan to assure that the system will be capable of providing emergency medical services in the system’s service area during mass casualties, natural disasters, or national emergencies.
16. To provide for the establishment of appropriate arrangements with emergency medical services systems or similar entities serving neighboring areas for the provisions of emergency medical services on a reciprocal basis where access to such services would be more appropriate and effective in terms of the services available, time and distance.