TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 The University of South Florida is operating what officials say is the first university ambulance service in Florida, after receiving the licenses needed to run it on campus this semester.<\/p>\n
The service is run by USF\u2019s Medical Response Unit and is free for patients. Officials said the goal is to improve access to care and support existing emergency services in the campus area.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted to remove cost, that fear of that financial consideration from preventing people from accessing their health care services,\u201d said Austin Jared, EMS chief for the USF Medical Response Unit. \u201cSo that was a huge thing for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
In past years, the Medical Response Unit was not licensed to care for patients on the road. After more than a decade of work, USF began operating the ambulance service this semester.<\/p>\n
Jared said the unit\u2019s service area includes 105,000 people and more than 45,000 cars during peak hours.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a pretty incredible amount of people, and with that, there\u2019s a tremendous demand for health care services,\u201d Jared said. \u201cSo we wanted to hopefully be able to supplement the system and the existing infrastructure that\u2019s already here and give back to our community.\u201d<\/p>\n
The unit receives an average of three calls a day. Licensed volunteers respond to those calls and prepare the ambulance after each response by cleaning equipment and checking supplies.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe get a bag check assigned to us on the computer so we can pull that up,\u201d said Andrew Driggers, a volunteer paramedic with the USF Medical Response Unit. \u201cAnd it\u2019s got a list of everything we need with the numbers that we need and their amounts that we need.\u201d<\/p>\n
Driggers said the program is a way for students and volunteers with emergency medical training to get involved.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf anybody is coming to college and wants to get involved, we have EMR, EMTs and paramedics,\u201d Driggers said. \u201cSo if anybody wants to get involved in this, I think it\u2019s a great way to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Officials said the ambulance service is not a replacement for 911. Anyone experiencing a life-threatening emergency should still call 911.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 The University of South Florida is operating what officials say is the first university ambulance…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394430,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3948,6466,28,30,29,571,6075,276,115,135,1374,835],"class_list":["post-394429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-app-health","tag-app-latest-health-stories","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-health","tag-health-and-medicine","tag-hillsborough-county","tag-news","tag-tampa","tag-tyler-oneill","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}