NHTSA’s Highway Safety Grant Program: An Opportunity to Improve Emergency Medical Services Response

Executive Summary

Since 2015, the annual number of crash fatalities has exceeded 35,000, with millions more injured every year. NHTSA’s mitigation goals include: enhance the survivability of crashes through expedient access to emergency medical care; and, create a safe working environment for the vital first responders. The nation’s paramedicine clinicians are partners in this process and the first responders to roadway crashes, providing treatment and transportation for the injured. But these clinicians face two large obstacles: they themselves have an extremely high crash related occupational fatality rate, and the EMS system in the U.S. is grossly underfunded.

In order to meet NHTSA’s objectives, the EMS system will require a new funding model and a mechanism to reduce occupational risks for the clinicians. As a step toward those goals, this Bill should provide funding for the state EMS offices to collect the data described in the questions section below, and require that in the event that any grantee or sub-grantee has not obligated any funds provided by this Act by the end of the third quarter of the grant year, all such funds shall be re-allocated to the relevant state or territorial emergency medical service office to be used for any general purpose related to highway traffic safety objectives.

Only if they have a safe working environment and adequate system funding can paramedicine clinicians provide the best possible care to their patients and the best possible support for meeting NHTSA’s objectives.

To read the entire article:  https://www.jems.com/operations/nhtsas-highway-safety-grant-program-an-opportunity-to-improve-emergency-medical-services-response-and-safety/