Cape Girardeau County ambulance service achieves accreditation from academy

Recently, Cape County Private Ambulance Service Inc. became one of two agencies in Missouri that is an Accredited Center of Excellence by the National Academy of Emergency Medical Dispatch.

The academy, which started accrediting dispatch centers around the United States in the early 1990s, requires agencies to meet 20 standards.

"We've been actively working at it for two and a half years, and even then we had to push it off a couple of different times," said Dr. John Russell, president of the ambulance service. "We just felt like we weren't ready because of personnel turnover and we just rebuilt our dispatch center, for example."

Accredited services must support all of the academy's code of ethics and must use the medical priority dispatch system. Dispatchers must be dedicated to quality assurance, continue their education with the academy and follow academy procedures when taking each 911 call.

"The academy has pretty strict rules," said Marla Bowers, communications supervisor for the ambulance service. "For example, whenever they take a call, dispatchers have a series of questions they ask before they can give pre-arrival instructions."

Russell said the accreditation is hard to achieve but it's provided a big sense of accomplishment for the dispatchers.

"There's a lot of validation," he said. "You're meeting standards set by an international organization."

For all the accreditation standards visit www.emergencydispatch.org.