KK: What changes do you think may be worthwhile that you might want to make? 

JK: Historically, EMS has focused on emergency response and providing care for emergency illnesses and injuries. There have been a lot of discussions about things like alternative transport destinations and alternative disposition activities for folks that EMS providers care for, including mobile integrated health care delivery. One of the other challenges that we‘re faced with is that EMS has grown so rapidly over recent years. The communication and collaboration among those organizations has been pretty good, but I think that we could probably still improve that a little bit. One of the things I really want to do is make sure that we identify all of the stakeholders as all of the activities move forward so that they have an opportunity to participate in the discussions and to be part of the process. We‘re very fortunate in emergency medicine that ACEP has been very involved in all of the activities associated with EMS for a very long time. The ACEP EMS staff are an extremely talented group. Rick Murray, Pat Elmes, and several others do a phenomenal job of keeping on top of things and making sure that the Board, the EMS Committee, and the membership are aware of all of the EMS issues that are going on.

KK: In the course of the great career that you‘ve had so far, and the great career ahead of you, if you could accomplish one thing through this position that would impact care delivery, what would it be, Jon?

JK: I think it would be that we continue to reinforce to everyone that is involved in EMS that EMS is very much a team sport. We have the folks in the field, clinical providers, educators, quality improvement coordinators, operational administrators, and local and state regulators. We all need to understand that we‘re all part of one team and continue to work together. We also need to continue to reinforce to the folks in the hospital, to whom we transfer care, that we‘re all part of the same team.