The answers were brilliant and useful for seasoned veterans of the profession as well.
Want 50%, or more, of your 2026 EMSAC conference registration to be reimbursed? Apply for CREATE funds! A CREATE grant will cover Registration! Mileage! Lodging!
The answers were brilliant and useful for seasoned veterans of the profession as well.
The 2026 Colorado legislative session was a historic one for EMS in Colorado. The General Assembly debated 619 bills and was forced to balance a nearly $1.5 billion budget deficit. Despite this, EMSAC and our partners in advocacy secured monumental victories that save people money on healthcare and improve the sustainability of EMS agencies.
The Advocacy Committee got to work early, taking an interest in more than 30 bills that in some way or another could impact EMS and healthcare. Our mission is simple: advocate policy that will empower EMS professionals and agencies to do what they do best—care for patients and serve their communities.
The answers were brilliant and useful for seasoned veterans of the profession as well.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) Office of EMS would like to make EMS leadership and clinicians aware of a new emerging synthetic opioid threat: cychlorphine, which has been linked to at least 55 deaths nationally.
Highlighted in the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) Drug Threat Notice, cychlorphine’s overdose risk, potency and detection challenges pose several serious hazards to EMS clinicians and their patients. Important cychlorphine considerations for EMS include:
Effective the first of 2026, if you are a current or former first responder, or a spouse of one, you can now ask your local county clerk for an application form at no charge to become a confidential voter in Colorado.
Thanks to the passage and signing of House Bill 25-1195 into law last year—sponsored by Representatives Dusty Johnson and Matthew Martinez, and Senators Kyle Mullica and Mark Baisley—Colorado has established protections for first responders and their spouses to request that their address be kept confidential in voter registration records.
The war in Ukraine has generated significant insights into trauma care under conditions of prolonged evacuation, persistent threat, and constrained resources. These conditions have forced a redefinition of prehospital care, emphasizing adaptability, prolonged management, and decentralized capability. While civilian EMS systems operate in different environments, they increasingly encounter similar constraints during rural operations, disasters, and system overload. This article expands on key lessons identified from first-person experience in Ukraine and provides detailed analysis of their implications for civilian EMS systems. Practical recommendations are offered to improve resilience, clinical performance, and patient outcomes in austere, low-resource, and high-demand settings.
SAVVIK is our buying co-op for everything EMS, from 5.11 pants and nitrile gloves to ambulances and monitor/defibrillators. Membership is available to public safety agencies and independent memberships for active first responders. Savvik’s goal is simple: provide the equipment and supplies agencies need at the best possible pricing. Through national cooperative purchasing, Savvik delivers cost savings to organizations serving public safety.
In addition to those savings, Savvik returns one-third of all purchases to its association partners. That means every purchase made through Savvik directly supports the Emergency Medical Services Association of Colorado.
This RETAC taskforce met on April 6 to continue its work toward use of the new federal Rural Health Transformation Project funds that will come to Colorado. They met to analyze the results of the recent RETAC (Regional Emergency Medical and Trauma Advisory Council) forum survey and to establish a unified direction for the upcoming Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP) planning effort. Nick Nudell supplied a comprehensive data review, guiding the group through the current landscape of EMS challenges and opportunities across the state.
By Donnie Woodyard Jr., MAML, NRP, WP-C
We call ourselves healthcare providers. We demand to be treated as healthcare professionals. We lobby for provider-level recognition, fight for clinical scope, and bristle when anyone suggests that EMS is "transport to healthcare." But here is a question worth considering: after your patient's encounter with your agency, what do the patients have access to, and what do they receive?
Bill 1069 Focus: Effort to remove commercial insurance provisions for Medicaid-only support, avoiding veto risk.
Austin Wingate
The team is navigating shifting legislative schedules and preparing for key bill hearings amid complex stakeholder dynamics
Ambulance theft is no longer a rare or isolated event—it is a predictable and growing operational risk. Industry data suggests that an ambulance is stolen approximately every two weeks in the United States, most often from hospital ambulance bays, but increasingly from active scenes. What was once considered an anomaly is now presenting serious and escalating consequences—including police pursuits, spike strip deployments, vehicle crashes, and situations where patients and crews are placed in harm’s way.
The uncomfortable truth is this: many of these incidents are preventable. This timely and practical webinar brings together operational leadership, regulatory insight, and legal expertise to examine ambulance security from every angle—what’s happening, why it matters, and what you can do about it now. The Academy of International Mobile Healthcare Integration (AIMHI), Pro EMS and Page Wolfberg & Wirth Advisory Group (PWWAG) are teaming up to help you address this issue.
By Jessica Nelsen
March 23, 2026
There are clinicians who talk about emergency medicine. And then there are those who have lived it across three time zones, at altitudes above 4,000 meters, in blizzards and on mountain slopes, in tactical operations and at the finish lines of hundred-mile races through the Rockies.
Nick Nudell is the second kind.
Hello - I am trying to find the paramedic from Colorado that I met up with running to the WTC on the morning of 9/11. Unfortunately, I cannot remember his name, and we obviously didn't have any time to really talk, but I know he was visiting NY that day and we were both downtown when everything happened and were running down Broadway (or Church St.) in order to provide assistance. I remember that he didn't have his Paramedic ID with him because he was just visiting NY and wasn't expecting to be called into action. I also credit him with helping to save my life. This man and I were on the corner Broadway and St. Peter's church setting up temporary medical triage, pulling people who were hurt off the line of people leaving the building. When the first tower fell not many of us had any idea what was happening because we were so close, just one block from the base. From the sound, I thought that a missile was coming in and I started running across the street.
What I'll never forget is this guy yelling to me 'WRONG WAY, WRONG WAY!' and so I ran back to him, we both crouched down by a very small wall on the corner of the church's property and I remember him saying, 'Just breathe slow and deep' and we covered our mouths with our shirts. When the debris cloud hit us we were in pitch black for about 5 minutes or more and I was starting to hyperventilate and I know I would have lost it had this person not calmed me down with a few words during those crutial moments.
By Howard Paul, Communications Director
Or copy this text:
