(1) There are 31,000,000 child and adolescent visits to the Nation’s emergency departments every year.
(2) Over 90 percent of children requiring emergency care are seen in general hospitals, not in free-standing children’s hospitals, with one-quarter to one-third of the patients being children in the typical general hospital emergency department.
(3) Severe asthma and respiratory distress are the most common emergencies for pediatric patients, representing nearly one-third of all hospitalizations among children under the age of 15 years, while seizures, shock, and airway obstruction are other common pediatric emergencies, followed by cardiac arrest and severe trauma.
(4) Up to 20 percent of children needing emergency care have underlying medical conditions such as asthma, diabetes, sickle-cell disease, low birth weight, and bronchopulmonary dysplasia.
(5) Significant gaps remain in emergency medical care delivered to children. Only about 6 percent of hospitals have available all the pediatric supplies deemed essential by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Emergency Physicians for managing pediatric emergencies, while about half of hospitals have at least 85 percent of those supplies.
(6) Providers must be educated and trained to manage children’s unique physical and psychological needs in emergency situations, and emergency systems must be equipped with the resources needed to care for this especially vulnerable population.
(7) Systems of care must be continually maintained, updated, and improved to ensure that research is translated into practice, best practices are adopted, training is current, and standards and protocols are appropriate.
(8) The Emergency Medical Services for Children (EMSC) Program under section 1910 of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 300w-9) is the only Federal program that focuses specifically on improving the pediatric components of emergency medical care.
(9) The EMSC Program promotes the nationwide exchange of pediatric emergency medical care knowledge and collaboration by those with an interest in such care and is depended upon by Federal agencies and national organizations to ensure that this exchange of knowledge and collaboration takes place.
(10) The EMSC Program also supports a multi-institutional network for research in pediatric emergency medicine, thus allowing providers to rely on evidence rather than anecdotal experience when treating ill or injured children.
(11) The Institute of Medicine stated in its 2006 report, ‘Emergency Care for Children: Growing Pains’, that the EMSC Program ‘boasts many accomplishments . . . and the work of the program continues to be relevant and vital’.
(12) The EMSC Program is celebrating its 25th anniversary, marking a quarter-century of driving key improvements in emergency medical services to children, and should continue its mission to reduce child and youth morbidity and mortality by supporting improvements in the quality of all emergency medical and emergency surgical care children receive.
(b) Purpose- It is the purpose of this Act to reduce child and youth morbidity and mortality by supporting improvements in the quality of all emergency medical care children receive.