Upper Darby Paramedic Rescue First EMS Agency to Carry Blood Products on Vehicles

Amazing, incredible, beautiful moves are being made right here in our region. So I heard about this. Check this out. The Upper Darby Paramedic Rescue became the first EMS agency in our neck of the woods to carry blood products on their EMS vehicles. That is a huge deal. I know I just said a mouthful, but I need you guys to understand what we're talking about here. These ambulances who are picking up people in the most critical point of their lives, potentially on their way out. Let's be really real here. They need as quick of assistance as possible. And to know that we've got these products on board right now as we speak, we could be talking about life or death. This could be a life-saving situation. I want to bring in Dr. Herbert Schiffer from the Medical Director of Upper Darby Paramedic Rescue to talk about how incredible this is. First of all, congratulations. I mean, yeah, not everybody gets this opportunity, and now you guys have become the first in our area. Can you just talk to me a little bit about how it even, like, how much time it took, what it took to get this done? Absolutely. So over the last year or so, we've been working with our blood supplier, the region. Our blood supplier has been Life Plasma, which has been absolutely phenomenal to work with. Thank With the advent of blood being in the Pennsylvania protocols for the last 18 months or so, we've been able to have blood processes put together, and ultimately what we've been able to do is get blood into our supervisor's vehicle, and we're going to get it out from there. But this process has been an ongoing wish you. for us to provide to the citizens of Upper Darby and the surrounding area because we recognize that both medical and trauma reasons People are dying and we want to stop that. We want to get them the blood they need so that they can live and that they can recover and become healthier again. Now, with you guys having them already in the vehicle, so when you pull up and EMS is out there to assist someone, talk to us about how having this on hand and having it quickly available to you and readily available to you can really make the difference in saving someone's life. Absolutely. The rapidity, as fast as we can get to the patient, that really matters. And what we do is we keep it, we're starting with the supervisor's vehicle and we're going to our chase vehicles following that. So there's the most availability to get the blood to the people that need it. In Delaware County, the 911 center collects the information, lets us know what's going on so we can redirect that unit to the calls that have the greatest chance for needing blood. Many times it's either a GI bleed or an obstetrical emergency. Sometimes it could be some sort of a traumatic issue. But any time that somebody's bleeding, we want to make sure that we get the right resources to them so that they get the blood and the resuscitation they need to be as healthy as they can once they get to the hospital for definitive care. Well, you don't understand. Well, you do understand because you guys fought to get this done. I'll What kind of blood are you all carrying? Because I understand that that's very important too. It is very important. be So we carry O positive blood, which is able to be used by all people right in the acute phase of their resuscitation. It's what's carried in most trauma centers in the refrigerator and the trauma bay. So we're able to very quickly. back. Thank you very much. Someone out there is wondering it, so I'm going to go ahead and be the person to ask it. You guys are carrying it on board with you all. Let's say, thankfully, gracefully, you don't have to use all that you have in your supply. What happens to the leftover blood? So any unit of blood that we open for a patient and we give to that patient, that only goes to that patient. And I do want to say that there are people that don't want blood. And if you can tell us you don't want blood, we respect you for that and we will not give it to you. But if we open the unit of blood, it is assigned to that patient. It never goes to anybody else. We really believe that the patient safety starts and ends with the individual patient in front of us. Now, you guys are just the first in Delaware County to start carrying this on board with you all. And by emphasizing the first, I assume that means we're hoping that other agencies will pick it up as well. So what is the hope for the rest of the region? So we're the first Delaware County licensed service to carry blood in Delaware County. There's already at least one other service that we've been speaking to who's interested in duplicating our processes. What has to happen is contractual relationships between Life Plasma is who we use. We found that they're very interested in working with other pre-hospital services in order to get blood out to the community. So it's a contractual relationship. And then the next piece that becomes really important is blood drives so that we can continue to get blood out to the out to the EMS services. And what we've really been very happy to have is that we have a commitment from Life Plasma that if people can donate blood in the community, that blood will stay in the community. So if people don't have other ways to give back to their community, it's a great way to do so. Well, that's awesome. I've done stories before where we talk about how there's a shortage of blood and blood donors in the country. Is that still true? It is true, and that's one of the reasons why we work so closely with our blood banking colleagues. We really want to get this out there. We want to do more blood drives. We want people to donate to provide blood for EMS to provide in their communities. It is such a very important resource for people in hemorrhagic shock. Yeah, I think it's really awesome that you have the option where if you want to stay in the community, it can. I didn't know that that was a thing, but it's actually a new concept. A very cool one, especially for our area. You know, people are very, very Philly strong, Philly centric. Very much. I hear that you can help out your own neighborhood if no other way than this one. It's a great option. We want everybody to give back as they can. Yeah. Cool stuff here. I'm glad that you made time for us to share what's going on out there. And again, congratulations for getting this. Thank you, ma'am. I'm looking forward to seeing how it might spread to some of the other agencies around as well. How's it going? Thank you so much. No problem. Thank you.