Could drones revolutionize emergency medical responses?

Drone technology: All the buzz in reducing emergency response times

What if the first responder on the scene of a cardiac arrest were a drone carrying an automated external defibrillator?

When every second counts, public safety professionals are increasingly eyeing drones — which can fly 60 miles an hour and don’t get stuck in traffic — to deliver help faster than an ambulance or EMT.

Starting in September, 911 callers in Clemmons, N.C., may see a drone winging its way to those suffering a cardiac arrest. Under a pilot program operated jointly by the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office, local emergency services, the Clinical Research Institute at Duke University and drone consulting firm Hovecon, drone pilots from the sheriff’s department will monitor 911 calls and dispatch drones.

The sheriff’s office has approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to operate within a 2-mile radius of the launch site, beyond the visual line of sight. Upon arrival, a drone will hover 125 feet above the caller’s location and lower an AED complete with verbal instructions.

“We’ve never been able to move the needle for cardiac arrest in private settings, and this technology could meet that need,” said Monique Anderson Starks, a cardiologist and an associate professor of medicine at Duke, who is leading the program. It will eventually operate six drones at six sites in Forsyth County and James City County, Va., that can deliver AEDs, she said.

It’s a critical problem. More than 356,000 people suffer cardiac arrests outside of a hospital setting every year in the United States. About 90 percent die, because they don’t get immediate help. Every minute that passes without medical intervention decreases survival odds by 10 percent.

In the United States, emergency medical services take an average of seven minutes to arrive after a 911 call, one study found, but the time varies considerably by region.

A Swedish study published in the Lancet in 2023 compared the cardiac arrest response times between drones and ambulances in 58 deployments in an area of about 200,000 people. It found that drones beat the ambulances to the scene two-thirds of the time, by a median of three minutes and 14 seconds.

Drones are being tested in other types of medical emergencies, too. In Florida, Tampa General Hospital, Manatee County and Archer First Response Systems began a program in May to deliver not only AEDs by drone but also tourniquets and Narcan, the nasal spray that can reverse an opioid overdose. The program currently operates in a 1.5-mile radius, within visual line of sight.

In New York City, the police department plans to use drones to drop emergency flotation devices to struggling swimmers at local beaches. Emergency rescuers elsewhere have used drones to locate people who wander away from nursing homes.

One hurdle to these programs spreading has been the FAA’s usual requirement that these airborne devices be used within their operators’ visual line of sight. In May, when Congress passed the FAA reauthorization bill, it gave the FAA four months to issue a proposed rule spelling out requirements for operating beyond the visual line of sight.

“The FAA is focused on developing standard rules to make [beyond visual line of sight] operations routine, scalable and economically viable,” said Rick Breitenfeldt, an FAA spokesman.

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On the Hill

Senate tees up vote to protect kids online

On our radar: Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) is expected to bring the Kids Online Safety Act to the floor for a vote today.

The legislation would create a legal “duty of care” forcing digital platforms to take “reasonable measures” to prevent their products from endangering minors online. The safeguards would extend to their use of design features “likely to cause psychological distress, loss of control, anxiety, or depression.”

Why it matters: The proposal has gained significant traction in Washington amid growing bipartisan concern that social media platforms could deepen mental health issues among minors and expose them to dangerous material online. Schumer told The Washington Post’s Cristiano Lima-Strong last week that he expects the legislation to clear the chamber “by a very large vote.”

Yes, but: The measure faces significant uncertainty in the House, where lawmakers abruptly pulled it from consideration at a legislative markup last month. The proposal also faces enduring opposition from digital and human rights groups, who argue it would restrict speech and encroach on privacy.

From our notebook

Former HHS secretaries amp up bipartisan push for site-neutral payments

Former Health and Human Services secretaries Kathleen Sebelius and Alex Azar are among the policymakers calling for Medicare to pay the same rate for the same service, whether it’s provided in a hospital outpatient department or free-standing doctor’s office, our colleague Dan Diamond reports.

Their argument got a spotlight on Monday at an event organized by the Paragon Heath Institute, a right-leaning health policy think tank, and three other groups. (Video of the event is available on C-SPAN.)

Hospitals have countered that the current payment rates are necessary, arguing that hospital outpatient departments are held to a higher safety standard than other outpatient care settings, among other factors. The American Hospital Association last month put out a statement and infographic dismissing the “false information” and “misinformation” spread by critics of the policy.

The former HHS secretaries were critical of hospitals’ efforts to block site-neutral payments.

There is “not an iota of evidence” that outpatient facilities provide lower care quality than hospitals, said Sebelius, who led HHS during the Obama administration. Hospitals are “sometimes dangerous places to be,” she added, particularly given staff shortages, the potential for errors during a weekend or holiday shift, and other challenges.

“If it’s unsafe to do a procedure at an ambulatory surgical center, that it shouldn’t be happening there,” added Azar, who led HHS during the Trump administration. “Paying more to the hospital doesn’t make the hospital safer.”

The issue has brought together interesting ideological bedfellows. Paragon’s Brian Blase, a longtime critic of the Affordable Care Act, led the event and interviewed Sebelius, who was in charge of implementing the law.

A second panel of experts from the American Enterprise Institute, Brookings Institution, the Center for American Progress and Paragon — representing a mix of policy viewpoints — also chimed in with criticism of how Medicare pays hospitals.

Medicare’s existing payment formula is a “pretty asinine policy,” said Brookings’s Loren Adler. “Medicare is making effectively an active choice at this point, to pay about twice as much on average, for the exact same service to be done in a hospital outpatient department, rather than a physician’s office.”

Election watch

Harris hits Georgia to mark abortion rights “week of action”

On tap today: Vice President Harris will make her first visit to Georgia as the likely Democratic nominee, as part of her campaign’s “Fight for Reproductive Freedom Week of Action” across battleground states.

During the event, Harris will reaffirm her commitment to restoring Roe v. Wade. She’ll also attempt to tie former president Donald Trump to Project 2025 — a right-wing policy blueprint that proposes new restrictions on reproductive care, according to campaign officials. (Trump has denied any involvement with the document).

Notable: Harris’s pledge to restore Roe aligns with President Biden’s position, but some abortion rights advocates are urging her to go further. Dozens of groups have endorsed a set of policies that would enact sweeping federal abortion protections, arguing that gaps in the landmark ruling allowed states to limit the procedure later in pregnancy and impose restrictions like mandatory waiting periods, according to Politico’s Megan Messerly and Alice Miranda Ollstein.

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