News Release – June 3, 2025
VML’s Gowdy receives a special recognition award from the Peninsula Emergency Medical Services Council, Inc.
Tuesday, June 3, 2025/Categories: News Releases
For Immediate Release: June 3, 2025
Contact: Rob Bullington, Director of Communications, rbullington@vml.org
VML’s Gowdy receives a special recognition award from the Peninsula Emergency Medical Services Council, Inc.
VML Executive Director Michelle Gowdy was recently honored with a special recognition award from the Peninsula Emergency Medical Services Council for her work on the Virginia Regional EMS Medication Workgroup.
Background: For more than four decades a majority of the Commonwealth’s EMS agencies received their medications through hospital stocked regional EMS medication kits exchanged one-for-one when an agency delivered their patient to a hospital emergency department. The Commonwealth of Virginia had been forecasting the demise of this system since the passage of the Protecting Patient Access to Emergency Medications Act by Congress in 2017. In October of 2023 as an EMS community, we learned that the FDA had passed regulations created by the Drug Supply Chain Security Act that was going to force the transition much sooner than expected. Faced with a little more than a year to complete the transition, a deadline that was ultimately extended another five months, the Regional Councils began working with stakeholders’ groups, subject matter experts, agencies, and organizations throughout the Commonwealth to develop a coalition to work on resolving the problem and to provide the statewide EMS system with information tools and guidance.
For the last 18 months, the Virginia Regional EMS Medication Workgroup comprised of 14 agencies and organizations and 54 individuals helped the Board of Pharmacy develop new EMS informed emergency regulations as well as final regulations. These individuals staffed tool teams for Controlled Substance Registration and DEA licensure, Policies and Procedures, Purchasing, Financial Assistance, and DEQ and Pharmaceutical Waste, created educational workshops for EMS agencies and acted as subject matter experts to provide guidance in their use. The work group was supported by dozens of individuals and agencies who also shared their time and expertise which resulted in meeting the April 15, 2025 deadline that had been established. Almost all of the over 500 EMS agencies in the Commonwealth successfully transitioned from hospital stocked regional EMS medication kits to agency stocked kits, a monumental feat!
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