Paramedics/ALS
For over 25 years, Emerson has provided our community with a regionalized Advanced Life Support service. During this time, Emerson Paramedics and the EMS Responders in our community Fire Departments have worked as a team to bring you immediate, quality and coordinated emergency care—wherever and whenever you needed assistance.
It has been an extremely rewarding partnership for us and, more importantly, for you. Now that partnership is evolving, but most importantly it is a partnership that will continue. And the good news is that for you the transition will be seamless.
A new partnership between the towns we serve and Emerson Hospital is now in place. This new partnership will enhance the care and response times throughout our community. The Central Middlesex EMS Collaborative has crafted a new partnership with Emerson, which will enhance the care and response times throughout the 13 towns we serve. Anyone in need of medical assistance will continue to dial 911 as they have in the past. Two teams, staffed by highly trained Paramedics from Professional EMS, are now covering designated sections of our service area, enabling us to improve availability and response times.
These Paramedics are operating under the Emerson ALS license, in a subcontracted service to Pro EMS. The trucks and the Paramedic uniforms will be co-branded with the Emerson and Pro EMS identification. They are being deployed through a centralized ALS dispatch center which utilizes a GPS vehicle tracking program to ensure the closest truck is dispatched to the incident.
Emerson’s skilled Emergency Department physicians will continue to provide medical control and quality oversight, as they have since our Paramedics program began in 1982. And thanks to computerized patient documentation in the field, critical patient information will be readily available to the emergency physicians and staff through a safe and secure website.
You can be confident that this new partnership will build upon nearly three decades of collaboration. Together, we are dedicated to upholding the highest standards of quality emergency response for the towns we proudly serve.
Roles of Paramedics and EMTs
Paramedics, EMTs and emergency physicians work as a team from the moment we’re contacted until the patient is treated at the Polo Emergency Center. However, paramedics and EMTs have distinct capabilities.
- EMT – Trained in basic life support and qualified to perform non-invasive procedures such as cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), administration of oxygen, splinting of fractured limbs and extrication of victims of motor vehicle accidents.
- Paramedic – Trained in advanced life support and qualified, under the direction of a physician, to perform certain invasive procedures, which are usually performed only in a hospital's emergency department.
What to do in an emergency
In the case of a medical problem that requires immediate attention, community residents should call 911 or their local emergency phone number.