Getting Ambulances to Rural Oklahoma
Filed by Michael Cross in Feature, Local News, News, Politics.
October 27, 2011
State Lawmakers got an earful from local officials and Emergency Medical professionals about the difficulty in getting ambulance services to rural parts of Oklahoma.
Speakers at a task force on Thursday talked about the difficulty in getting EMS to rural areas even after a 2010 law passed to allow communities to create their own boundaries for ambulance service.
Task Force Chairman Representative Doug Cox, an emergency room physician out of Grove, says more legislation could change some of the restrictions handed down by the Oklahoma Department of Health.
“Presently you have to have an EMT both as a driver and the person in the back. That may be throwing up some road blocks to volunteer fire departments starting to run an ambulance.”
The 2010 law also required counties to submit a rural EMS plan to the Health Department, but only about a third have complied.
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