1. Short title
This Act may be cited as the “EMS Counts Act of 2020”.
EMS Counts Act of 2020
A BILL
To require the Secretary of Labor to revise the Standard Occupational Classification System to accurately count the number of emergency medical services practitioners in the United States.
2. Findings
Congress finds the following:
Emergency Medical Services (in this Act referred to as “EMS”) personnel provide a critical role in emergency response. EMS consists of a diverse group of health care practitioners, such as paramedics, emergency medical technicians (in this Act referred to as “EMTs”), dual-role firefighter/EMTs, firefighter/paramedics, and volunteer personnel serving in each of such roles.
EMS is an integral component of the response capacity of the United States to disasters and public health crises, such as outbreaks of infectious diseases, bombings, mass shootings, earthquakes, tornadoes, and hurricanes. EMS personnel respond to more than 22,000,000 emergency calls each year including strokes, heart attacks, cardiac arrest, and trauma.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics compiles information on the number of individuals working in roles across the entire United States workforce. The Bureau of Labor Statistics completes this work by maintaining the Standard Occupational Classification system which classifies workers and jobs into occupational categories for the purpose of collecting, calculating, analyzing, or disseminating data.
The BLS fails to accurately count EMS practitioners because of its failure to include dual-role firefighter/EMTs and firefighter/paramedics in their count of EMS personnel.
Accurately counting the EMS workforce is critical for government agencies in determining the needs of EMS agencies and practitioners. These data are also crucial for informing many aspects of policy including preparedness for natural disasters, public health emergencies, and acts of terrorism.
3. Recognition of dual-role firefighters as EMS practitioners
Not later than 120 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Labor shall revise the broad description under the occupational series “33–2011 Firefighters” of the 2018 Standard Occupational Classification System of the Bureau of Labor Statistics to include the following detailed occupations:
Firefighters.
Firefighter/EMTs.
Firefighter/Paramedics.
Firefighters, All Other.
4. Reports to Congress
Not later than 270 days after the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Labor shall submit to Congress a report that details—
the actions taken in 2015 to expand the definition “29–2040 Emergency Medical Technicians and Paramedics” to separately account for the numbers of EMTs and paramedics; and
the implementation of the revisions under section 3.