EMS

The MESB serves as the administrative, financial, governance, and contractual agent for the Metro Region EMS System for governance and accepting and dispersing funds in the metropolitan region under agreements with state and federal agencies. The allocated EMS funds support the core mission of the Metro Region EMS System to prepare and support regional EMS coordination to provide effective and efficient regional EMS response in the wake of any disaster through ongoing collaboration with local, county, and state emergency management, public safety, public health and healthcare provider agencies.

The mission of the Metro Region EMS System is to:

  • Maintain the capability to coordinate and sustain regional EMS system response strategy for surge capacity by providing and supporting education, planning and exercises.
  • Maintain the Metro EMS Regional Coordination Center and ability to provide 24/7 on-call staffing for EMS multi-agency coordination (MAC), which could also provide state EMS coordination.
  • Maintain a regional deployable cache of EMS response equipment.
  • Maintain and sustain the operations and response capabilities of the Metro Region EMS mass casualty incident (MCI) bus.
  • Support and maintain the Minnesota Metropolitan Regional Trauma Advisory Committee operations.
  • Provide EMS leadership within the Metro Health & Medical Preparedness Coalition.
  • Provide education on current EMS topics or issues to EMS providers in the metro region.
  • Enhance the knowledge and/or skills of EMS providers and manager
  • Support the Metro Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) team
  • Offer grants to:
    • improve the coordination of emergency medical response in the ten-county metropolitan region;
    • improve resource utilization;
    • demonstrate enhanced cost-effectiveness of services;
    • evaluate medical equipment, treatments and pre-hospital interventions;
    • improve pre-hospital medical care skills of emergency medical responders in the metropolitan region;
    • evaluate trends or developments in pre-hospital care;
    • establish a basis for pre-hospital protocols or standard operating procedures; or
    • otherwise demonstrate a positive impact on regional EMS services.