Bill Rogers If you want to find out how long it takes for a publicly funded Emergency Medical Services crew to respond to a call in South Carolina, forget it. It’s secret.

An obscure state law, passed some years ago at the request of DHEC, casts a blanket of secrecy over all EMS information.

State Sen. Harvey Peeler, R–Gaffney, is working hard to fix the problem and amend the current law, but now another secrecy issue has come up.

The S.C. EMS Association wants the names of public EMS responders kept secret, and its desire for secrecy could stall Sen. Peeler’s effort to bring sunlight to EMS information across the state.

The EMS group wants responders’ names to be withheld from the public and press until after a peer–review process, if there is one.

The group ignores the fact that if you don’t have a responder’s name, you can’t very well file a complaint, and there won’t be a peer review. In the more likely circumstance, you can’t thank a responder who did a great job because you won’t know a name.

The secrecy problem came up last year after an S.C. Attorney General’s opinion about releasing information. Since then, officials in Columbia and in Beaufort County have refused to release information about EMS calls, saying it isn’t public.

That includes how emergency workers responded to a stricken three–year–old boy in Columbia and a severely beaten man in Beaufort County.

The argument for secrecy is that EMTs would be unfairly targeted for criticism by the public and in the press. The EMS Association has been asked to provide evidence to support this assertion but has failed to do so.

EMS responders are public servants and the public deserves to know who they are and how they perform their jobs. Like policemen, they have no legitimate expectation of privacy concerning their professional conduct.

The EMS group argues that because nurses’ names are confidential, EMTs’ names also should be confidential. The fallacy of this position is that it ignores a state law specifically requiring that nurses, doctors, and other health care providers in hospitals wear name badges so they can be identified.

The issue is not public access to medical or treatment records relating to patients, but access to information regarding the performance of EMS units. Public oversight of EMS activity is vital. Our legislators need to get behind Sen. Peeler’s effort to repeal the current law barring public review of emergency medical services, and defeat amendments keeping the names of responders secret.

Bill Rogers is Executive Director of the S.C.

Press Association