Access to Emergency Medical Services Act (H.R. 882)

This is an important bill, and I encourage all Americans to look it over. Reducing the waiting time in emergency departments and improving access to emergency medical care are goals that all of us should be willing to support. The links below make writing your Congressional representative as simple as can be. Somebody already wrote the letter for you, all you have to do is "sign" it.

Physicians:
Contact Your U.S. Representative to support this legislation

Concerned members of the public:
Contact Your U.S. Representative to support this legislation

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Access to EMS Act Fact Sheet

From the ACEP website:

Every American expects emergency departments to provide expert medical care when they need it. Emergency departments are a vital part of every community - caring for critically ill or injured patients, as well as victims of epidemics, natural disasters and acts of terrorism. Emergency physicians also care for people who have nowhere else to turn and often are the only source of medical care available at night, on weekends and on holidays.

Recognizing the important role of emergency medicine and trauma care in this country and acknowledging the critical problems patients face when these services are not readily available, the "Access to Emergency Medical Services Act of 2007" (AEMSA) was introduced on February 7, 2007 by Reps. Bart Gordon (D-TN) and Pete Sessions (R-TX) in the U.S. House of Representatives.


* The legislation sets up a bi-partisan commission on access to emergency medical services that will make recommendations to Congress to rectify obstructions to patients receiving care. The commission would examine issues such as emergency department crowding, the availability of on-call specialists and medical liability issues that impede access to emergency medical services.

* The legislation addresses the practice of leaving or "boarding" admitted patients in emergency departments until an inpatient bed becomes available, which cause gridlock, long waits for treatment and ambulance diversion It requires hospitals to report to the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) the amount of time admitted patients are being held or "boarded" in the emergency department while they wait for inpatient beds to become available. If the data collected justifies the development of a quality measure to ensure improved patient care, then HHS would work with all affected parties to develop a hospital boarding measure aimed at alleviating this problem.

* The continuing decline in payments for emergency medical care reduces resources to care for more patients, decreases access to on-call medical specialists who lack financial incentive to be on-call to emergency departments, and makes emergency medicine unattractive to medical students when choosing a specialty. For this reason, the bill calls for increases in Medicare payments to physicians who provide care in emergency departments.