Specifications include, but are not limited to: Johnson County Department of Health and Environment Office of the Medical Director is seeking proposals for telemedicine services performed in conjunction with emergency calls, prior to transport. • Currently Emergency Medical Services (EMS) providers lack the capability to provide “medical screening” for patients who call 911. Medical screening is something that can only be provided by a licensed Nurse Practitioner, Physician Assistant or Physician. Medical screening ensures that a patient does not have a severe or life-threatening emergency that needs urgent or emergent care. • Since EMS providers cannot provide medical screening they must recommend transport to the hospital regardless of the severity of a condition, illness, or injury. This is due to the limited diagnostic capabilities available to EMS providers in the field environment to safely rule out potentially life-threatening conditions. • Many patients call 911 for non-emergent and non-life-threatening conditions. Unfortunately, the only option for EMS providers is to recommend transport to a hospital emergency department, no matter how minor the illness or injury. • This single option of transporting to the emergency department is a poor, inefficient use of ambulances. Ambulances and the providers who staff them should be available to handle the next true emergency in the community. • These unnecessary transports to a hospital emergency department cause the patient to be billed for a service (ambulance transport) as well as a very costly emergency department bill (often minimum ER visits are at least $2,000-$5,000).
