State EMS Advisory Board and Committee meetings scheduled for February 3-4, 2022 are Postponed
The State EMS Advisory Board meeting and Committee meetings scheduled for Thursday, February 3 and Friday, February 4, 2022 have been postponed. All meetings will be rescheduled within 30 to 60 days of the original scheduled dates of February 3-4, 2022.
Due to the continued surge in COVID cases and high positivity rates from the Omicron variant we have determined that Board members and attendees should not be pulled away from their employment or jurisdiction; and we should avoid large group meetings at this time. The most important factor in canceling this meeting is the health and safety of all our Advisory Board and Committee members; whom are EMS providers; physicians; nurses; EMS and Fire Chiefs, Supervisors, Directors; and leaders in jurisdictions, stakeholder groups and health care systems that are all experiencing continued workload demands in your primary jobs. The Governor’s Executive Order 84 issued last week was issued specifically to provide relief to hospitals’ ability to expand bed space and increase providers within these facilities to meet the Omicron variant demand over the next 30 days. We believe we should be in a better position to offer a meeting of the full 28-member Board in March or April.
OEMS Legislative Grid and Report
Starting today, and then each Friday or Saturday during the 2022 Virginia General Assembly session, OEMS will provide the State EMS Advisory Board members, Regional EMS Councils and other EMS stakeholders an OEMS Legislative Grid and Report on all legislation we are tracking at this point.
If you would like to have a full copy of any bill, please contact OEMS or log in at: https://lis.virginia.gov/ and you can view and download any bill of interest. Please let us know if there are any bills you would like for us to add to our profile list. We encourage you to forward this information to your constituents and group lists to keep them updated.
Many times OEMS is questioned as to why some of the bills are included on our tracking grid/report. Every bill that is on the list (thus far) has been identified because of its direct impact or potential impact on components of the EMS system, ranging from telemedicine services, Line-of-Duty Act, and public health emergencies to free standing emergency departments, emergency custody and temporary detention transportation, traffic incident management vehicles and penalties for tampering with EMS equipment and vehicles.