Advocacy with Rob Lawrence

How can a single professional voice influence the legislative landscape of the EMS profession?
In this episode of Registry Insider, Bill Seifarth sits down with Rob Lawrence of Prodigy EMS, who is the current executive director of the California Ambulance Association. Rob joins the show during the EMS Association Summit to discuss the vital role of advocacy at every level of government. The conversation explores how every Clinician acts as a politician when they educate local and federal officials on the true cost of readiness and the necessity of fair reimbursement. Rob also shares insights on successful initiatives, such as implementing emergency medical dispatch requirements and building strong partnerships with labor unions.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:13

Welcome to the Register Insider. I'm Bill Cyphers from the National Registry VMTs. And on today's episode, we're talking about advocacy, the role of advocacy and EMS and its importance. And today we're filming from the EAS, the EMS Association Summit in Kansas City, Kansas. And joining me for today's episode is the famous Rob Lawrence, who is uh who is the has a couple roles. He works certainly with Pro, and he'll explain his role there, but also uh with the as executive director with the California Ambulance Association. So Rob, thanks for joining me today for the Thank you for having me and a topic that's very dear to my heart, Bill. Yeah, and it's um tell for those of and everyone knows you, but for those who may not, a little bit about your roles and your background, and then we'll kind of get into advocacy a little bit more.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

Well, background first of all, I was an army officer in the British Army and then joined the National Health Service in the UK and was the chief operating officer of the East of England Ambulance Service next to London. Came to uh the US to Richmond, the Richmond Ambulance Authority for 10 amazing years as their COO. Kept moving to the west to uh Alameda County, California, uh COO there, and then stopped being the operations guy and started being the uh administrator, and so I then fell into two amazing roles. Role one is with Pro EMS, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Prodigy, uh, Prodigy EMS, people maybe know me from there, uh, and also the California Amulets Association. So, with Pro, I'm looking at all of the national uh advocacy and the national issues, and because of that, I'm the president of the Academy of International Mobile Healthcare Integration. With my other life and my other hat on, I'm the executive director of the California Ramlets Association. So, how do those two disparate parts of the country come together? And the answer is advocacy, because I'm doing state-level advocacy on one side and federal level advocacy on the other, and of course, these two come naturally together because we have to create something from state to federal and get stuff done. So that's where I kind of fit into the grand scheme of things.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

So uh as uh as you know, um, because we've had many conversations, but the national registry has recently uh emerged or started to get more involved with other organizations and partnership, including advocacy, because we recognize um the significance of that at a national level, but also at the state level, hence this conference here uh in Kansas City. Can you explain um for the average EMS clinician or EMS educator the importance of advocacy and why do we need to have advocacy uh in EMS?

SPEAKER_00 2:46

It comes down to three words, Bill, all in favor, because we need to be able to influence our board of directors, our local governing body, boards of supervisors. We need to be able to influence our state house, and of course, we need to be able to influence our federal legislators with whatever the initiative or the issue of the day is. And actually, the way that we do that is by putting our boots into their ground in order to express that there's something we seek to change, whether it's um you know treatment in place bills or whether it's bills that improve the working lot of our amazing medics, paramedics, uh nurses, etc., out there in the field. And so, therefore, everybody is a politician because whether you're at the local level or you're working at the federal level, you have the ability to express your professional EMS ambulance opinion to someone who could actually vote for a difference, and that's why everybody has to be that politician for us when we're advocating.

SPEAKER_01 3:45

So, how how can someone get involved if they want to? I mean, let's let's talk at a state level, local and state level first, and then we'll get to the national level.

SPEAKER_00 3:53

Well, firstly, uh even though it's national, places like the National Association of AMTs are broken down into regions, and of course, there is a you know in California, Michael Caduce, for example, is our regional director for the NAMT in California. So, of course, they can assist with you know state level legislation. Um, you have ambulance associations, uh, and there are sort of two types of ambulance associations I found from here today. There are those for which there are individual members, and there are those for which there are organizational or agency members. We're very much an agency member organization, and therefore we can use our agencies, and indeed, you know, they're amazing staff who want to become involved to help us with advocating for both state law change, state legislation, federal law change, and indeed local level stuff as well. And so, you know, the organization for whom you work may be a member of an organization, or as an individual, you can join something like NAMT with regional chapters in order to actually put your voice and your weight towards whatever the legislative initiative is that we're actually pursuing.

SPEAKER_01 4:57

Good. And um for NAMT, the folks can go to NAMT.org to find out more as far as how they can get involved on a national or regional level. Um, as it relates to your association in California, what are some of the hot topics right now that that would intersect with advocacy and uh important topics that folks?

SPEAKER_00 5:15

Well, I may I mean some of the things that we're working on and we have worked on, of course, we are seeking to increase the level of reimbursement, and people out there may go, oh my goodness, reimbursement. But of course, if money doesn't come in, money can't go out in terms of you know living wage. Yeah. And so, for example, on those initiatives, we are uh very much in lockstep with our California-based labor unions. And actually, we don't get a lot done without involvement with our union colleagues. And when we go to the podium, when we go onto Capitol Hill, we actually invite our union colleagues to come with us. When we have our annual conference, we have uh you know our union colleagues, we've had a number of panels with them on actually to to bust some of the demons and the myths, right? And so that's that's thing one, and so we are working on legislation around reimbursement. We're also working on things like last year. Would you believe in California we didn't have an emergency medical dispatch requirement across the state, and so we advocated to have and part and parcel that is because a lot, as people know, uh PSAPs answering points sometimes are controlled by sheriff's officers. They may not have the clinical, the medical wherewithal, but perhaps they should have the ability to transfer to somebody that that does and could and can. Can get pre-arrivals, right? And so, but that would that was where we got to, right? So we we say we wanted to have an EMD emergency medical dispatch bill, but actually we grew it down into everybody should be able to give pre-arrival instructions that that dispenses life-saving advice, whether it's telephone CPR, whether it's advice to a choking patient, and there's a sort of small range of that. And so we were able to get that through last year to have a PAI bill. So, and again, people like California, large state, didn't have this. No, we didn't have this. Um, so we're working on a number of initiatives that both help the patient and indeed help the provider as well, and so that's where advocacy comes in. Um, we have coming up, actually, I don't know when this is going to air, but to the first week of March, is our Stars of Life in Sacramento. 110 stars are being celebrated for the great work that they're doing. But of course, we use that then to parley that across the road into the Capitol to put these people in front of their elected officials to A praise them for the great work that they're doing, but also to actually make our political points as well. And of course, AAA has an amazing Stars of Life, an AMT, similar vein, EMS on the Hill. And it's that case of getting uniforms in front of officials to a celebrate what we do, but also to make those political points.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

And uh speaking of EMS on the Hill, that's coming up in March in Washington, D.C. And again, folks can go to NAMT.org to find out more about that. But um the reason why I wanted to have you talk a little bit about the activities of your California Association is because advocacy was involved in every single one of those. Yes. Uh and uh the the takeaway message, if if nothing else, hopefully folks will recognize the importance and need to get involved and uh where to go to find out how to get involved, because we all need to be involved if we're going to uh continue advancing the profession and moving it forward.

SPEAKER_00 8:21

Yep. If you are an individual person that wants to do more, there's lots of associations that we've just heard. If you're an organization that hasn't really been involved in the past, now is the time to become involved. Uh join a state or a national association or both or both, and more importantly, invite your locally elected official, because you know who they are, to come and see you, to come and see your organization, to come and see what they do, to give them an understanding of the difficulty of delivering EMS, to give them an understanding of the cost of readiness. It's not just we're paying for 10 minutes of the time it took you to get there and the 20 minutes it takes you to get to the hospital and the handover, and then they're gone again. It's a 24-7, 365 exercise, and the cost of doing that is immense. And so to get folk to understand that is a great role for ambulance companies to invite their locally elected officials in, show them around, show them what you do, and and you know, win a friend over. And so everyone can become involved.

SPEAKER_01 9:20

Well, I appreciate you taking time uh to chat with me today to talk about the importance of advocacy and kind of some practical uh practical approaches as far as what you're doing in California, but also nationally. And and again, I encourage people to um get involved, uh be active, and get engaged in advocacy so we can advance the profession and continue moving it forward. So, Rob, thank you for joining me for today's episode. Thank you very much, sir. Thank you for joining us as well, and as always, stay safe. Thank you for joining us for this episode. If you wouldn't mind, please click the like and subscribe buttons as well as the notifications so you can get notifications about the coming episodes. Also, for the latest and greatest happenings of the National Registry, feel free to go to nk.org. Thank you for watching again.