Please contact your lawmakers to ask them to make funding our Department of Public Health a serious priority. (Much of this text was taken from Dr. Amber Schmidtke’s public health blog: https://amberschmidtkephd.substack.com/)

Contact information

Please contact the members of the Georgia House and Senate appropriations subcommittees that will determine the budget allocation for the DPH. Non-committee representatives and senators then get to vote up or down on what the committee recommends. The subcommittees are vitally important.

Members of the House Health Subcommittee on Appropriations

Debbie Buckner (404-656-0116 or 706-269-3630)
Matt Dollar (404-463-7853)
Lee Hawkins (404-656-7855)
Carolyn Hugley (404-656-0109)
Butch Parrish (404-463-2246 or 478-237-3838)
Jesse Petrea (404-656-7857 or 912-629-2468)
Ron Stephens (404-656-5115 or 912-596-1998)
Darlene Taylor (404-656-7857 or 229-225-9943)

You can send an email to them all at once by copying and pasting these into your recipients line: debbie.buckner@house.ga.gov, matt.dollar@house.ga.gov, lee.hawkins@house.ga.gov, carolyn.hugley@house.ga.gov, butch.parrish@house.ga.gov, jesse.petrea@house.ga.gov, ron.stephens@house.ga.gov, darlene.taylor@house.ga.gov

Members of the Senate Subcommittee on Appropriations for Human Development and Public Health

Dean Burke (404-656-0040 or 229-243-6267)
Emanuel Jones (404-656-0502 or 770-294-3020)
Kay Kirkpatrick (404-656-3932 or 404-656-3932)
Butch Miller (404-656-6578)
Nan Orrock (404-463-8054 or 404-524-5999)
Lindsey Tippins (404-657-0406 or 770-424-2700)
Ben Watson (404-656-7880 or 912-527-5100)

Emails:
dean.burke@senate.ga.gov, emanuel.jones@senate.ga.gov, kay.kirkpatrick@senate.ga.gov, butch.miller@senate.ga.gov, nan.orrock@senate.ga.gov, lindsey.tippins@senate.ga.gov, ben.watson@senate.ga.gov

What to say

Here’s a suggested script for what to say when you call or email subcommittee members. These are the people you need to contact most right now. Feel free to modify the script, especially if you have had personal impacts from COVID-19 or other public health concerns.

Hi, my name is (____) and I am a registered voter who lives at (____). I’m contacting you today to ask you to consider increased funding for the Georgia Department of Public Health, above the Governor’s budget request, since you’re a member of the (House or Senate << say which!)) appropriations subcommittee that oversees DPH. This pandemic has highlighted the need for us to shore up public health infrastructure from top to bottom so that we can combat not just COVID-19 but many other areas where Georgia lags behind other states. Thank you for your time and your service to the state.

Phone calls are typically more impactful than emails, but you can do either or both. When you contact these individuals, know you’re a number being counted. So you can count once via email, or you can count 2 or 3 times if you email, call their capitol office and call their district office. You can count on multiple days, too. When you call, remember that you will be speaking to a staffer, not the elected official themselves. They are there to take a message. So please be polite and respectful. The same is true for email.

If you want to, you can also contact your own state house representative and senator (you can find yours here):

Hi, my name is (____). I’m a registered voter and one of your constituents who lives at (____). I’m contacting you because I’m very concerned about the state of public health in Georgia. This pandemic has highlighted the need for us to shore up public health infrastructure from top to bottom so that we can combat not just COVID-19 but many other areas where Georgia lags behind other states. I’ve been in touch with members of the House and Senate appropriations subcommittees that determine the budget for the Georgia Department of Public Health and asked that they increase funding for public health. Please do all within your power to support increased funding for the DPH as well. Thank you for your time and your service to the state.

Receiving these contacts from their constituents is going to make your representative and/or senator take notice. It signals that you’re serious not just about public health, but about voting. Again, be respectful. Hopefully our collective efforts work. When that time comes, we’ll do this again, but to thank the members for their support of public health. We need that support not just for this year but the years to come.

Sometimes, this can have deadly consequences.

So, what can we do about our unreliable ambulance service in Athens?

State-Level Reform

A popular ethics and transparency bill recently came before the Georgia legislature. House Bill 264 would have applied strict, new transparency and ethics protections in EMS delivery. It passed the House 148-6 and the Senate 51-0. In the eleventh hour the bill was effectively poisoned when an individual representing narrow, moneyed interests (such as Priority EMS) put a rider in the bill that was so outrageous that no member in either party could support it. So, a bill that had cleared both houses (199-6) was not even voted on.

This was unfortunate, but we are hopeful the bill will pass next year. Until then, there is a lot we can do locally to address this issue.

Local Action

You can see a list of our local priorities for EMS reform here.  Our Priority #1 is, “All 911 EMS Emergency Responses will be handled exclusively through our state of the art 911 Athens-Clarke County Dispatch Center.” Right now, if you call 911, you will have to tell your emergency twice, to two different agencies! This is confusing, inefficient and potentially life threatening. It needs to stop.

We have learned that a study was recently completed by ACCPD about community needs regarding 911 dispatching. The conclusion of the study was that “ACCPD Central Communications (911 Center) will process and dispatch EMS calls received through emergency telephone lines. ACC Central Communication will operate under emergency medical dispatch (EMD) protocols and provide medical instruction to callers.”

So, our top priority for EMS is already endorsed by the Police Department!

The recommended option of both ACCPD and A4E will enhance efficiency, increase transparency and save lives. It unfortunately has not been prioritized by our elected officials so far. The commission is currently debating the FY 2020 budget, so now is the time to focus their attention on this extremely important public safety reform.

Please email Mayor Girtz and your commissioner today!

Script

Dear Mayor Girtz and Commissioner _______,

I am writing about the proposed FY 2020 budget for Athens-Clarke County and to let you know that I am concerned about our privatized ambulance service. People in need of emergency assistance shouldn’t have to explain their emergency twice — it causes delays and puts people at risk.

Our own police department has recommended that we switch to a central communication center and take over dispatching for all 911 calls. I agree with this idea and I want to urge you to find funding for it in this year’s budget.

There are so many community needs currently lacking funding, so I understand this can be a tough decision. But public safety is a core responsibility of government. Residents of Athens need to know that, in their moment of greatest need, help will be on the way as quickly as possible. Right now, this is not the case. Please address this issue as soon as you can.

Thank you for all the work you do for our community,

Sincerely,

Your Name

______________________________________________________________

Send to:

kelly.girtz@accgov.com
patrick.davenport@accgov.com
mariah.parker@accgov.com
melissa.link@accgov.com
allison.wright@accgov.com
tim.denson@accgov.com
jerry.nesmith@accgov.com
russell.edwards@accgov.com
andy.herod@accgov.com
ovita.thornton@accgov.com
mike.hamby@accgov.com

In fact, it couldn’t hurt if you want to go ahead and email them all!

Please share this post with friends who might care about the quality of emergency health services in Athens.

Athens for Everyone
May 6, 2019

It’s not over yet! There’s still time to stop bad bills and pass good ones.

Call or email:

Rep. Houston Gaines (R-117) at (404) 656-0325, houston.gaines@house.ga.gov

Rep. Spencer Frye (D-118) at (404) 656-0265, spencer.frye@house.ga.gov

Rep. Marcus Wiedower (R-119) at (404) 656-0325, marcus.wiedower@house.ga.gov

Sen. Bill Cowsert (R-46) at (404) 463-1366, bill.cowsert@senate.ga.gov

Sen. Frank Ginn (R-47) at (404) 656-4700, frank.ginn@senate.ga.gov

Make sure to tell your friends in other districts to call their state legislators, too. Don’t know who your legislators are? Find out here.

Also:

Speaker David Ralston (R-7) at (404) 656-5020, david.ralston@house.ga.gov

Sen. Jeff Mullis (R-53) at (404) 656-0057, jeff.mullis@senate.ga.gov

Please contact your legislators as soon as possible.

Call or email:

Athens Senators

Sen. Bill Cowsert: bill.cowsert@senate.ga.gov or (404) 463-1366

Sen. Frank Ginn: frank.ginn@senate.ga.gov or (404) 656-4700

Senate Leadership

Mike Dugan, Republican Senate Majority Leader: mike.dugan@senate.ga.gov or (404) 463-2478

Butch Miller, Republican Senate Pro Tempore: butch.miller@senate.ga.gov or (404) 656-6578

Geoff Duncan (R), Lieut. Governor: geoff.duncan@house.ga.gov or (404) 656-5030

Make sure to tell your friends in other districts to call their state legislators, too. Don’t know who your legislators are? Find out here.

The Georgia House of Representatives has already voted 93-73 to approve HB 481, also known as the Living Infants and Equality (LIFE) Act or a “heartbeat bill.” The bill, which outlaws abortions after a heartbeat is detected (as early as six weeks), heads for a vote in the Georgia Senate as early as this week, after passing out of committee this morning. Athens Reps. Houston Gaines and Marcus Wiedower voted in favor of the bill (Rep. Spencer Frye voted against it). If the Senate votes to approve the bill and Governor Kemp signs it into law (which he has promised to do), Georgia will have one of the strictest abortion laws in the country. Planned Parenthood Southeast has said HB 481 effectively bans abortion in the state of Georgia. Many women don’t know they are pregnant at six weeks. While our current laws ban abortion after 20 weeks, this will further restrict a woman’s control over her own body — in a state with one of the highest (if not the highest) maternal death rates in the U.S. and where about half of the counties already do not have access to an ob/gyn. The law makes an exception for women who are pregnant due to rape or incest, but they must have filed a police report. Forcing women to report rape and incest places an unnecessary burden on the survivor, especially within the timeframe of an unwanted and traumatic pregnancy. HB 481 also states that the “full value of a child begins at the first detection of a human heartbeat in the womb” and grants the fetus the status of a dependent minor for income tax purposes. Supporters of HB 481 think the conservative state appellate courts will push this legislation all the way up to the Supreme Court. They see this bill as a means to overturn Roe v. Wade, as so-called “heartbeat bills” conflict with protections offered in the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision. Note: The ACLU and the Georgia Reproductive Health, Rights & Justice Coalition are hosting a lobby day at the capitol this Thursday, March 21, at 9 a.m. More information here!

Personalized calls are more effective than multiple calls reading the same script, so express your personal feelings frankly! Here is an example script that you can build off of or use:

Hello, My name is [NAME], calling from [CITY]. I’m calling today because I do not support laws that effectively outlaw abortion. Please vote no on HB 481 to ensure that women have access to necessary care for their health and are able to control their own bodies. Six weeks is so early that many women won’t know they are pregnant yet, meaning this bill effectively bans abortion, forcing women to make unsafe decisions in regard to their unwanted pregnancies. Research shows that this law will not reduce the number of abortions in Georgia and could cause even more deaths in a state with one of the highest maternal death rates. Thank you for the chance to share my concerns.

Feel free to modify the script, depending on whom you’re calling.

Please contact your legislators TODAY.

TELL THEM: Support abortion rights!

Thanks for caring,

Legislative Action Network Athens for Everyone

Want to get these alerts in your inbox? Sign up here.

• Ban ambulance vendors from serving on Department of Public Health hiring councils;
• Require vendors to register with the state ethics commission and ban pay-to-play;
• Require mandatory service reviews to ensure safety; and
• Require that all ambulance service providers meet national safety standards and adhere to best-practices.

Athens for Everyone is proud to join the GATP coalition in the fight for transparency and improved ambulance service statewide. The “corporate cronyism” which always seems to happen when public services are handed to for-profit companies like National EMS (now Priority Ambulance) can have deadly consequences.

Take the case of Donna Martin, who died from a wasp sting in Morgan county last year when the National EMS ambulance failed to arrive on time. Athens for Everyone reported last year before this incident occurred that National EMS consistently fails to meet their contractually-required response time standard of under 9 minutes 90% of the time in Athens. We unfortunately do not believe that Donna’s case is isolated or unusual.

We applaud the Georgia Ambulance Transparency Project for their work on securing powerful co-sponsors for HB 264, such as Terry England (R), the chair of the Appropriations committee. This bill has a good chance to pass, but we need to let our representatives know we support it! Ambulance vendors should not be allowed to serve on their own hiring councils.

You can use this script to call or email your representatives, but the most important people to contact right now are:
PK Martin: p.k.martin@senate.ga.gov
Jeff Mullis: Jeff.mullis@senate.ga.gov
Matt Brass: matt.brass@senate.ga.gov
Sharon Cooper: Sharon.cooper@house.ga.gov
Terry England: terry.england@house.ga.gov

Dear Conference Committee Member,

I am writing to ask you to please pass the House version of HB 264 and please do not strip the bill of it’s key provisions on transparency, openness and reporting (as the Senate version did).

This bill is so extremely important to victims of Georgia’s broken EMS system and their families. It is vital that this bill be passed and that it be strong and promote transparency and openness.

Thank you for your service to the conference committee on HB 264 and the legislature.

Sincerely,

Your Name

Please call or email today!

Local EMS Reform

HB 264, while a positive first step, would not be enough to solve the EMS issues that we’re seeing locally. We’ve developed a list of five priorities to fix this situation for Athens.

Briefly, we are asking for all 911 EMS emergency responses to be handled through our public 911 Dispatch Center, for improved transparency on the oversight committee and regarding National’s 31,055 delayed responses in recent years, for National to stop abandoning 911 coverage zones and ultimately for EMS services in Athens to return fully to public hands.

We are hopeful for a positive outcome for HB 264 and for transparency here in Athens as well. With these changes, we believe that unnecessary deaths like Donna Martin’s can be avoided. Until then, stay safe everyone.

Athens for Everyone EMS Initiative
February 25, 2019

As the end of the session approaches, contacting our representatives about HB 264 becomes even more urgent: please call Jeff Mullis (404-656-0057) and your representative TODAY and tell them you support HB 264!

For years, National EMS and both hospitals have refused to release their ambulance “911 Emergency Response” numbers. 911 emergency calls are a public service, even if provided by a private company. We believe National EMS has a responsibility to be transparent and should be held accountable when they fail to provide timely service.

We filed an open records request with the Georgia Department of Health that showed that National EMS is far from meeting its obligations as stated in its contract and in the national standards. According to these numbers, in the smallest county in the state of Georgia, National EMS only responded to 39 percent of 911 calls within the 8 minute and 59 second standard and did not meet the 90 percent of the time requirement until 18 minutes.

Now National EMS is saying that the numbers it provided to the Georgia Department of Public Health for “911 Emergency Responses” are misleading. National EMS Chief Operating Officer Benny Atkins stated in the Flagpole on June 27 that these numbers combine “high priority calls that are true emergencies, like heart attacks, with lower priority calls, such as transfers between hospitals.” The Georgia Department of Public Health labeled all the calls it provided in response to our open-records response as “911 Emergency Response.” Transfers between hospitals typically do not originate in the 911 system. We are asking that National EMS back up its claims with verifiable data and provide the complete data set.

If you’ve been following our stories, you know that 911 emergency medical services in Athens and Oconee County are provided by National EMS, a private, for-profit company. Adding a profit motive to this vital public service can lead to the abandonment of required coverage zones to run more lucrative non-emergency transports. The Athens-Clarke and Oconee governments subsidize National, with $100,000 each, but our two hospitals hold the actual contract, and they need to hear from you.

Call:

Avery McLean (St. Mary’s Hospital): (706) 389-3890 or amclean@stmarysathens.org

Sydney Walker (Piedmont Athens Regional Medical Center): (229) 561-4163 or sydney.walker@piedmont.org

National EMS is required to meet certain response-time standards by its contract. It’s not even close to meeting those times. It’s also not transparent, even though it receives significant public funds. We had to file an open records request to get National’s numbers, and although it has an oversight committee, the meetings of that committee aren’t announced or open to the public. When people call 911 here, they have to explain their emergency twice — once to the Athens-Clarke County dispatcher and again when the call is handed off to National EMS. This is confusing, inefficient and extremely dangerous. National EMS refuses to establish a separate division for running 911 calls, choosing to put profit over public safety.

Piedmont’s public statement on National EMS reads:

“Piedmont Athens Regional is a member of a committee composed of county commissioners and other community representatives who review National EMS response times on a bimonthly basis. In addition to response times, that review includes other performance factors, such as the priority of calls, patient outcomes and EMS staffing. Based on that regular review, Piedmont Athens Regional is pleased with the quality performance of National EMS.”

Is that good enough for you?

Personalized calls are more effective than multiple calls reading the same script, so express your personal feelings frankly! Here is an example script that you can build off of or use:

Hello,

My name is [NAME], calling from [CITY]. I’ve seen some stories recently about National EMS, the private for-profit ambulance service that both Athens hospitals contract with to provide emergency 911 service, and I am very concerned. National is required to meet a certain standard of timeliness, and it seems like they are not even close to doing so. Their meetings are not open to the public, and they are not very transparent about their times and failings. I believe EMS is a public health service and should not be run for profit because it encourages companies to send their ambulances where they can make more money instead of where they are most needed. Can you tell me what, if anything, you plan to do to address these concerns?

Please call your hospitals TODAY.

TELL THEM: Reliable EMS is a public health issue!

Thanks for caring,

Legislative Action Network
Athens for Everyone

Want to get these alerts in your inbox? Sign up here.

The first four spreadsheets are the raw, unprocessed data from 2014 to 2017 as received from the Georgia Department of Public Health through a state Open Records Request. Excel spreadsheets 5-8 are the data as processed by our accountant. We are also attaching further documentation, including a copy of the Open Records Request itself.

The type of call we are tracking are those that come in through 911 and are labeled “911 Emergency Response” by the Georgia Department of Public Health (Column C of the Excel spreadsheet, “Type of Service Requested”). All 50,918 calls we tracked have the words “911 Emergency Response” in Column C. Transfers between hospitals do not typically come in through 911 despite what National EMS Chief Operating Officer Benny Atkins recently claimed.

Note that in the raw data Excel spreadsheet, Column A is “Service Name – National EMS,” Column B is “Incident County – Clarke,” and Column C is “Type of Service Requested – 911 Emergency Response.” Again, all 50,918 calls we had analyzed are from Column C and labeled “911 Emergency Response” by the Georgia Department of Public Health. This means that all calls were made from Athens, Georgia and started as 911 emergency calls.

Finally, we would like to emphasize further that averages can be highly deceptive. The National Fire Protection Association 1710 and Commission on Accreditation of Ambulance Standards call for EMS response within 8 minutes and 59 seconds 90 percent of the time, as does National’s contract, with no mention of a required average. We have been asking National for years to provide the time within which it answers 90 percent of its calls and it has steadfastly refused to release those numbers. Now we know why.

Athens for Everyone
July 2, 2018

National EMS consistently fails to meet the required response times. Its contract guarantees that the company will meet the national standard of 8 minutes and 59 seconds on 90 percent of 911 calls. But between 2014 and 2017, National EMS only responded to 39 percent of 911 ambulance calls within 9 minutes and only 48.5 percent within 10 minutes. Between 26,235 and 31,055 calls failed to meet the standard set out in the contract, by their accrediting body, and by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 1710. In 2016 and 2017, National EMS answered 90 percent of its calls within 18 minutes (more than double the 8 minute and 59 second standard; see table below).

We obtained the data through an attorney and an Open Records request through the Georgia Department of Public Health. These numbers have been processed according to standards established by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. You can see the raw data and other supporting documents here.

National EMS admittedly and systematically abandons state-mandated 911 coverage zones to run more profitable, non-emergency transports. Sam Rafal, coordinator of our EMS response initiative, asked the owner of National EMS, “Can you assure me that if a member of my family has a time sensitive, life-threatening emergency that the 911 ambulance designated to cover our zone will not have been pulled to run a non-emergency transport?” The answer was an emphatic, “No, I will not.” Additionally, when an emergency occurs, callers have to explain their medical or traumatic emergency twice — once to the Athens-Clarke County dispatcher and again when the call is handed off to National EMS. This is confusing, inefficient and extremely dangerous. National EMS refuses to establish a separate division for running 911 calls, choosing to put profit over public safety.

Recently, District 1 commissioner-elect Patrick Davenport had a situation where his mother collapsed and was in excruciating abdominal pain. He called 911. He explained his emergency to the dispatcher. He was put on hold while the call was handed off to National EMS, where he had to explain his emergency again. After waiting over 15 minutes for an ambulance response, he loaded his mother into the car as best he could and drove her to the hospital himself. According to Commissioner Elect Davenport, “I felt like I had done something wrong when I called 911.” He had not. This is just the system we have in Athens-Clarke County, Georgia.

To address long EMS response times, Athens for Everyone demands the following:

1. That the ambulance service in Athens-Clarke County, Georgia, be a public service run through our fire department. If this public safety service remains under (for-profit) private control, we demand the EMS provider run separate 911 and non-emergency transport divisions.

2. That National EMS immediately stop abandoning 911 coverage zones to run non-emergency transports.

3. That all 911 medical calls be handled through our 911 Athens-Clarke County Dispatch Center.

For further reading, please check out this website or our previous blog post on the topic.

911 Ambulance Response Data for Athens-Clarke County

National EMS 2014-2017

Data Source – Georgia Department of Public Health

Data Reviewed by Turner and Patat, P.C. Certified Public Accountants

Percentage of 911 Ambulance Calls Responded to in Under 9 Minutes

**According to the Commission on Accreditation of Ambulance Services and the National Fire Protection Association, ALS (advanced life support) ambulance response should occur within 8 minutes and 59 seconds 90% of the time.

Percentage of 911 Ambulance Calls Responded to in Under 10 Minutes

**According to the Commission on Accreditation of Ambulance Services and the National Fire Protection Association, ALS (advanced life support) ambulance response should occur within 8 minutes and 59 seconds 90 percent of the time.

Athens for Everyone
June 26, 2018

p.s. Concerned about EMS services in Athens? Let the hospitals know! You can see numbers to call and a script here.

In 2009, both Athens-Clarke County hospitals shifted from providing their own ambulance services to contracting with National EMS, a private for-profit company (Ben Emanuel’s 2008 article in Flagpole details some of the discussion at the time). Finding accurate data on response times has been near impossible, and although National’s contract requires it to meet certain standards, the company recently shifted to measuring “patient outcomes,” saying response times don’t matter. What exactly constitutes a “patient outcome” is undefined.

Athens for Everyone members were concerned enough about this issue to add it to our 2018 platform, chosen from a list of options at the annual meeting last month. That plank reads:

Improve ambulance response times to provide better pre-hospital care for residents of Athens. Our private, for profit ambulance provider routinely puts profit above public safety by abandoning emergency response zones and pulling 911 ambulances to run profitable, non-emergency transports. We will demand transparency of 911 medical response time data, require that all 911 medical calls be handled by the ACC 911 Dispatch Center, and insist that National EMS run a priority 911 ambulance service by establishing separate emergency and non-emergency divisions.

Recently, one candidate for a seat on the A-CC Commission had a situation where his mother collapsed and was in excruciating pain. He called 911. He explained his emergency to the dispatcher. He was put on hold while the call was handed off to National EMS, where he had to explain his emergency again. After waiting over 15 minutes for an ambulance response, he loaded his mother into the car as best he could and drove her to the hospital himself.

Ex-St. Mary’s paramedic Bob Gadd (who worked for National EMS) and EMT Sam Rafal have been raising the issue of response times since 2008, when St. Mary’s and what was then Athens Regional changed their policies of providing ambulance service. The state of Georgia does not require counties to have any kind of ambulance service, and the Athens-Clarke County mayor and commission had no say in the original decision. That said, Athens-Clarke County subsidizes National to the tune of $100,000 a year (as do Oconee County, St. Mary’s and the hospital now known as Piedmont Athens Regional).

A Flagpole article from last year points out that:

Although National is overseen by a committee made up of county, UGA and hospital officials, Gadd noted the “complete lack of transparency” in a letter to the Mayor and Commission, because all of the data comes from National itself. He suggested asking the ACC 911 center to compile the raw data itself and taking an anonymous survey of “street-level” police and firefighters.

In a time-critical, life-threatening emergency, seconds count and minutes matter. William Ballard, M.D., an interventional cardiologist with the Piedmont Heart Institute states, “The most important thing to remember about chest pain, particularly if it’s a heart attack, is that time is muscle. In other words, the longer you are deprived of blood flow to your heart, the more permanent the damage can be.” The St. Mary’s Department of Interventional Cardiology writes, “In the event of a heart attack or coronary blockage, saving time means saving lives.”

The medical journal Stroke says the difference between a 7-minute response and a 17-minute response to a stroke is just under 20 million brain neurons, and Taylor Esdale, RN, stroke program manager at Piedmont Atlanta, says, “Time is brain when it comes to treating strokes. The faster we’re able to get stroke patients the care they need, the less brain damage there is.”

Time is even more important when it comes to pediatric medicine. Greg Pereira, director of trauma transport for Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, says, “We talk about the ‘platinum 30 minutes.’ Every second counts.”

Other counties in our area (even more rural counties that generally provide fewer services than Athens-Clarke does) provide county-operated EMS, including Oglethorpe, Jackson and Barrow counties. Considering all of the evidence about the importance of timeliness in emergency medicine, why is National EMS changing its focus to “patient outcomes”? Why won’t it turn over its data? Why aren’t the mayor and commission advocating more forcefully for transparency on an important public health issue?

Athens for Everyone
April 11, 2018