The Membership Organization of State Offices of Rural Health
EMS leaders from across the nation convened in San Antonio, TX, last month for the 2nd National Rural EMS Conference. Approximately 160 Federal partners, state EMS officials, hospital workers, local EMS providers, State Offices of Rural Health, nonprofits, universities, and other stakeholders were in attendance. Networking, collaboration, and education were the key elements of the conference.
“This meeting enabled 
me to bring back to our state a better idea of what the current issues are and develop a plan to move forward in tackling some very tough issues that seem to be shared by a large amount of the states at the conference,” said one attendee.
Attendees were given the chance to hear about a broad range of topics, including Community Paramedicine, Mobile Integrated Health, Rural Frontier Policy Changes and Federal updates from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. In addition, for the first time, attendees had the opportunity to speak with a representative from the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy to provide feedback on how funding is directly impacting work on the ground with rural EMS providers.
The success of the conference was a direct result of a diverse group of people and organizations coming together for a common goal.
“The Joint Committee on Rural Emergency Care and our partners did a great job of pulling together a mix of State Offices of Rural Health, state EMS officials and local EMS stakeholders. The conference provided a focal point to being able to build collaboration at the local, regional, state and national levels, to really make a difference to rural EMS leadership,” said Matt Strycker, NOSORH Special Projects Coordinator.
Two representatives from the media outlet EMS1 were in attendance and featured two articles on their website: State EMS directors discuss hot topics in rural EMS and Rural EMS issues take center stage at national conference.
All conference presentations are available on the NOSORH website.