The Oregon Office of Rural Health’s (ORH’s) EMS Supplement Flex Grant has entered its second year of funding. The program encompasses multiple significant goals within its five-year span. Launched in Sept. 2024, the program supports workforce recruitment and retention for Oregon’s rural and remote EMS agencies.
First-year accomplishments
With a multifaceted approach, the program targets key areas of need, including supporting EMS provider education. Through an application process, scholarships for EMS certification education are available for EMT, AEMT, EMT-I and paramedic levels. The first-year goal of 10 scholarships was exceeded as 16 scholarships were awarded.
“The ORH EMS Flex Supplement grant was specifically designed to address the most significant needs that were reported when rural EMS agencies were surveyed and interviewed. Funding to train new medics turned out to be a high priority,” says Rural EMS Program Coordinator Joan Field.
EMS education was further supported this year with Helping EMS in Rural Oregon (HERO) training grants. Goals were again exceeded by ORH awarding eight HERO grants to rural volunteer agencies (the first-year goal was to award six grants). Some of these HERO grants helped to provide emergency medical responder (EMR) courses. Since EMR certification can often be an important first step to gain volunteers and paid staff in rural spaces, three additional rural agencies also received ORH funding to host an EMR class.
Community paramedicine, also known as mobile integrated health care, is an emerging care model that can be particularly helpful for rural communities. With that in mind, another aspect of the grant targets assistance for students seeking to become certified community paramedics by providing a scholarship for an accelerated CP-C course. In year one, the grant supported two students along this emerging health care provider path.
For students who are receiving ORH scholarship funding but still have barriers to completing their EMS education, ORH can also provide limited, focused assistance for mileage and lodging, textbooks, childcare or access to a computer for online coursework.
“The support from ORH has been instrumental in equipping Harney District EMS with industry-leading training and personnel,” shares Harney District Hospital (HDH) Interim EMS Chief Kyle Snider. Many times, a rural agency can’t afford to reward a motivated medic with funding for higher certification training. Harney District EMS has grown its staff internally by utilizing the EMS Flex grant to offer additional EMS education to a number of its existing personnel.”
“This internal growth has been beneficial and critical, considering the historic difficulty rural EMS agencies have in recruiting qualified and skilled EMS professionals,” Snider adds. “Simply put, HDH EMS has been able to grow and progress in a way that wouldn’t have been possible without the help of the Flex EMS Supplement grant.”
Upcoming plans and goals
Other aspects of the five-year EMS grant are beginning to unfold and will continue to expand during the project’s second year.
Developing project elements include peer support for EMS agency leadership and billing staff, ongoing support for Oregon community colleges to develop online EMT courses for remote and rural agencies, support for attending leadership-focused conferences, and support for bringing peer-support resources and education in-house to rural EMS agencies.
ORH supports rural EMS in many other ways as well. Each year, ORH facilitates multi-partner medical or trauma simulation events for Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs) and their local EMS agencies.
To learn how you can recognize EMS agencies that demonstrate exceptional commitment to their rural communities' health care and health outcomes, consider nominating them for the Oregon Rural Health Excellence Award.
In addition, ORH supports the Oregon Individual Income Tax Credit for rural volunteer EMS providers. Learn more about that here.
For more information on these programs and others, visit the ORH EMS webpage or email Joan Field.