A change to county EMS protocol will ensure heart attack victims and victims of traumatic injury get the appropriate care they need, faster.

Starting May 15, any EMS patient in the process of having a heart attack will be automatically transported to one of two cardiac cath labs: CarolinaEast Medical Center in New Bern or Vidant Medical Center in Greenville, depending on which hospital is closest, said John Flemming, Beaufort County EMS director. Those patients with traumatic injury will be taken by air or ground to Vidant Medical Center, the only trauma center in the region.

The change will bring Beaufort County EMS into compliance with statewide EMS treatment protocols and will allow these two types of patients to be taken to the facility where they can get the specialized treatment they need, without making a stop at the closest hospital, Flemming said.

“Before, we were transporting every (case) to Vidant Beaufort,” Flemming said. “What we’re doing is taking a step out of the middle.”

Flemming said for those in the midst of a heart attack, quickly getting them to a place where testing and procedures can be done to reopen arteries greatly improves a patient’s outcome.

“If someone is having chest pains and EMS is dispatched, if the EKG shows they’re having a heart attack, at that point we’re going to take that patient from there directly to a cath lab,” Flemming said.

For local paramedic-level squads responding to a heart attack or traumatic injury, this means they will be responsible for transport to the appropriate hospital outside the county, should helicopter transport be either unavailable or inappropriate for the case, Flemming said.

These updates were written into state protocol in 2009, but are just being implemented now, as the county has progressed to paramedic-level service, Flemming said. The Beaufort County EMS oversight committee, EMS peer review committee, EMS Medical Director Dr. Emilie Pendley and Assistant Director Dr. Bryan Kitch signed off on the update to the protocol.

Flemming said there has been some misinformation about the change in transportation protocol, including that EMS squads will be prohibited from carrying patients to certain facilities. He said that is not the case — patients who do not fall into the heart attack or trauma injury categories will be taken to the nearest hospital, just as they always have.

“We’re just trying to get those two patient subsets to the most appropriate care. It helps improve the outcomes of our patients,” Flemming said. “It is a change. We want to assure the public that this change is a betterment and not something that’s going to be detriment to the patient.”