The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) have entered into an agreement with the National Association of EMS Educators (NAEMSE) to develop national EMS education standards that will eventually replace the U.S. DOT national standard curricula. The hope is that formal education standards will help guide EMS education program managers and educators in making appropriate decisions about what material to cover in the academic setting.

     "When the creators of the EMS Education Agenda started looking at the entire system of EMS education several years ago, one of the things they identified is that perhaps a prescriptive curriculum is actually an impediment at some levels to creativity and fostering new delivery methods, and perhaps we should move, as other allied health professions have, to broader education standards that would allow faculty and others to develop more creative ways to teach," explains project director Debra Cason, program director of EMS Education at UT Southwestern in Dallas. "Our struggle in EMS is that we've relied on a national standard curriculum for all these years and we may not be supporting our educators at all levels. Many volunteers do EMS education, although it's not their vocation as much as it is their avocation-they do it because there's a need. And they do a good job, for the most part, but they're probably not ready to take on broader education standards and know how to develop their own objectives and lesson plans."

     The challenge, says Cason, is to make the standards broad enough to let those educators who are able do their own course design and sequencing, and possibly include a bit of distance learning, yet retain enough prescription so the nonprofessional educators can use the material to teach EMS courses without having to use their energy on developing content.

     "The other thing is that we're hoping the education standards can be broad enough so they won't have to change every time a new research project tells us we should be doing something different or every time the American Heart Association changes its standards," says Cason. "Many times, the curricula are quickly out of date-sometimes before they're even printed-so we want the instructors to be able to reference the latest AHA guidelines and have adequate resources for the instructor pool that's teaching at all levels."

     The project is in its infancy and is not due to NHTSA until August 2008, says Cason. In the meantime, there are many questions that need to be answered, like how will the new standards impact National Registry testing, and will the number of training hours change?

     "The intent is that once the states adopt the National Scope of Practice Model and the education standards that go along with it, national credentialing and national accreditation will be consistent with those concepts," says Cason. "The Registry typically tests based on practice analysis, not just curriculum, so I think that would continue to be the case. As for hours required, there is some speculation that they might change, but until we write the standards and have them reviewed by the EMS community, that's hard to know. It's been a learning experience for all of us about what exactly this is and what it means."

In other EMS News

HIPAA: Big Bark, But Little Bite So Far
     Despite receiving thousands of complaints about violations of the federal privacy law protecting Americans' personal health information, the U.S. government has not fined a single violator in three years, the Washington Post reported in June. In addition, there have been just two criminal cases stemming from breaches of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

     The federal government has received 19,420 formal complaints of HIPAA violations so far, the Post said; the most common of these have concerned inappropriate disclosures and insufficient protection of protected health information; disclosures of more details than were necessary; disclosures without obtaining proper authorization; or patients having difficulties getting their own records.

     More than 14,000 of these cases-upwards of 73%-have been closed with determinations that no violations occurred or promises by accused entities to fix whatever problems they'd had.

     "Our first approach to dealing with any complaint is to work for voluntary compliance," Winston Wilkinson, head of the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Civil Rights (which is in charge of enforcing the law), told the newspaper. "So far it's worked out pretty well."

     Around 5,000 cases remain open, Wilkinson said, some of which could result in fines. The federal government has received 19,420 formal complaints of HIPAA violations so far.

     EMS is bound by HIPAA requirements.-Washington Post