Regional emergency medical communications systems

The lack of adequate area-wide communications and the absence of institutions responsible for coordinating regional emergency care services represents a problem of major dimensions to this country. Each year over 115,000 people die from accidents, and more than 50 million are injured. Estimates go as high as 90,000 lives a year that could be saved with adequate emergency care. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation´s program, which is described, is aimed at generating a national effort to establish well planned regional emergency medical communications systems to coordinate emergency and disaster medical services throughout relatively large geographic areas or population centers. Such communications systems have been tried successfully in a number of cities. What has been missing is the wherewithal, both financially and professionally. to implement a sufficient number of similar programs to speed the wide adoption of there systems within the structure of American medical care.