How can rural areas begin to get the access they need to emergency physicians who are EMS trained? According to Dr. Holland,” I think we’re on the right track. We’re seeing more and more EMS fellowships established around the country. It’s also the most popular subspecialty within emergency medicine.”

He also suggested incentivizing positions for EMS-trained physicians to work rurally, similar to incentive programs for primary care physicians. “Small agencies have small budgets. They are barely scraping by and a lot of them rely on volunteers, so it’s very hard for some of these agencies to pay a person to come out and spend quality time with them to do training and education,” Dr. Holland said.

Fifty years ago, the attitude used to be, “all you need is diesel. Get the patient to the ER as quickly as you can and let the real medical people do their job,” Dr. Holland said. Thankfully, those days are gone and the paradigm has shifted completely. The attitude now is, “we need to provide high quality care on-scene and we need to take our time doing it,” Dr. Holland explained. “We don’t need to rush to the hospital except in certain situations where the treatment can’t be provided in the field.”

Ms. Stanesic is a freelance writer for ACEP.