Advisory task force: ambulance services.

The Emergency Medical Services System and the Prehospital Emergency Medical Care Personnel Act establishes the Emergency Medical Services Authority. The act generally requires the authority to assess existing emergency medical services for the purpose of determining the need for additional emergency medical services, coordination of emergency medical services, and the effectiveness of emergency medical services. The act further requires the authority to develop, using input from stakeholders, including hospitals, local emergency medical services (EMS) agencies, and public and private EMS providers, and, after specified approval, to adopt, a statewide standard methodology for the calculation and reporting by a local EMS agency of ambulance patient offload time, as defined. This bill would require the Director of the Emergency Medical Services Authority to appoint and convene an advisory task force, and would further require the director to recommend a project plan for the advisory task force that includes an evaluation relating to ambulance patient offload delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as specified, and an evaluation of adopting technologies to allow EMS systems to better manage resources and improve response times. The bill would require the director to transmit the evaluations conducted by the advisory task force to the authority, in a manner that allows for their timely inclusion in an existing reporting requirement from the authority to the Commission on Emergency Medical Services, and to specified legislative committees. This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as an urgency statute.