Our country is facing a serious shortage of medications routinely used in the treatment of a wide array of diseases and conditions, including many medications we use in EMS. These shortages are seriously impacting our EMS systems and the ability of our EMS practitioners to serve their patients. The federal government is considering ways to address this problem both legislatively through Congress, and administratively through federal agencies with jurisdiction over health care and the manufacture and distribution of pharmaceuticals. To ensure that our federal legislators and administrators understand how drug shortages are affecting the provision of emergency medical services, NAEMT has been working in collaboration with other national EMS organizations.

NAEMT has participated in the development of two complementary letters to Congress that outline the drug shortage problem from the EMS perspective and provide suggestions for consideration by the Senate and House committees charged with crafting legislation to address the problem. To read these letters, please click here. NAEMT will also participate in a meeting on April 16 in Washington, D.C. sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services that will bring together representatives from federal agencies and national EMS organizations to clarify the scope of the problem and share ways that EMS systems are coping with the drug shortages. At this meeting, we want to share with participants how the EMS drug shortage is impacting the delivery of prehospital patient care from the perspective of EMS practitioners. Below is a link to a very short survey on this issue. Please take the time to respond to this survey so that we can accurately describe this problem from your perspective with federal agency leaders.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/emsdrugshortage

Thank you for taking the time to respond. We will keep you posted on this issue through our web site, www.naemt.org, and our e-newsletter, the NAEMT Pulse.