Healthcare Transportation Services: EMS vs. NEMT What is the Difference?
There are certain situations where senior citizens and people with disabilities find themselves unable to drive to their appointments, run errands, or just go out for non-medical reasons. Healthcare transportation services allow these patients to attend to their necessary medical and non-medical appointments. There are two these options emergency medical services, and non-emergency medical transportation services. These transportation are specifically designed to help patients carry on with their daily activities. But EMS and NEMT services are significantly different.
When people need transportation services to a medical facility, these options help them to choose the better option. However, many people don’t know the difference between these two healthcare transportation services. Let’s take a look at how they are different from one another.
Emergency Medical Services
EMS or Emergency medical services provide emergency medical care to patients. It can be activated when patients require first aid and treatment during medical incidences. Emergency medical services often offer immediate transport to hospitals and healthcare systems with their automated emergency vehicle. EMS is mostly tasked with responding to emergencies, but it is more than just normal healthcare transportation.
Attending to emergency responses
EMS coordinates with the response system and it is designed to respond to medical emergencies specifically. It has the involvement of many healthcare agencies, organizations, and solo practitioners. Every component using emergency medical services has a role in seamlessly integrating EMS for responding to any crisis calls. These components are:
Transportation and communication networks
Private and public organizations, agencies, startups, and medical facilities
Provision of highly-skilled and trained volunteers and professionals
Providers of EMS work collaboratively with and within the community as it falls under their roles and responsibilities to identify, respond, and inform medical, health, and well-being issues residing within the communities. These ambulance emergency transports and different EMS components ensure public safety and services and inform agencies to dispatch medical transportation services efficiently on local, state, or national levels.
EMS organizational structures
The EMS services' organizational structures are different depending on states, cities, and countries. These structures include fire departments, non-profit organizations, government agencies, healthcare organizations, hospitals, volunteer groups, local police, and more. To support special medical equipment, these emergency vehicles have strict protocols in please to respond to several medical emergencies, timely calls for backup, and other aspects.
