ROCKVILLE CENTRE, NY

North Shore-LIJ Health System’s impressive Emergency Medical Services performance in a six-month pilot project with the Village of Rockville Centre has led to a year-long contract extension between North Shore-LIJ and the village. 

North Shore-LIJ’s Center for Emergency Medical Services (CEMS) shattered its four-minute emergency response time projection during the pilot program (December 1, 2008 to May 31, 2009) coming in with an average response time of 3.3 minutes. Because of that performance, the village signed a new year-long contract with North Shore-LIJ that will continue throughout 2009 and into 2010.

Alan Schwalberg, director of operations for North Shore-LIJ CEMS, explained that health system ambulances responded to 465 calls and transported 358 people to area hospitals.  “We weren’t sure exactly what the number of transports was going to be when we started but we came in right in the middle of our projected estimate,” Mr. Schwalberg said.  “While it’s being done in other parts of the country, a program like this is unique to this region. One of the reasons we partnered with the village was to alleviate the heavy burden to the volunteer EMS providers within the village, who were running two ambulances 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

By all accounts, the program has been a huge success.  The EMS volunteers, who have other jobs, had been feeling the strain from running more than 1,800 aided cases a year.  With the North Shore-LIJ contract, much of that pressure on individual volunteers has been lifted.  Pricing for the agreement between North Shore-LIJ and Rockville Centre is based on a sliding scale. Depending on the number of ambulance transports North Shore-LIJ CEMS handles, the village may not have to pay anything for the arrangement because the health system would recoup all of its costs through insurance payments.

North Shore-LIJ’s CEMS is the largest hospital-based ambulance service in the New York metropolitan area and one of the largest in the United States, with more than 60 emergency response vehicles and over 300 emergency medical technicians and paramedics. Operating around-the-clock, CEMS has a state-of-the-art communications center that handles nearly 850 calls daily.  A global positioning satellite system allows dispatchers to track the exact locations of its ambulances and how soon they can respond to 911 calls.

About North Shore-LIJ Health System
The nation's third largest, non-profit, secular healthcare system, the North Shore-LIJ Health System cares for people of all ages throughout Long Island, Queens and Staten Island – a service area encompassing more than five million people. The health system consists of 14 hospitals, 18 long-term care facilities, The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, three trauma centers, five home health agencies, a hospice network and dozens of outpatient centers. In addition, North Shore-LIJ is partnering with Hofstra University to develop a new medical school. North Shore-LIJ’s owned facilities house about 5,000 beds, employ about 10,000 nurses and have affiliations with more than 7,000 physicians. Its workforce of about 38,000 is the largest on Long Island and the ninth largest in New York City.  For more information, go to www.northshorelij.com.

Media Contact:
Brian Mulligan
516-465-2618