VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — This week, an operational change went into effect for Virginia Beach EMS in which first responders will limit the utilization of lights and sirens for calls under their Priority 2 designation.
The change, confirmed by Chief Jason Stroud, is amid a nationwide shift by localities to rethink whether those signals should be deployed for every single instance that requires an EMS response.
“If we’re looking at a five-mile response, the use of red lights and sirens, at most, saves us two minutes according to our driving policy. So we know for 93% of our patient population, there is no impact to patient outcome,” he told 13News Now…