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Committee backs bill requiring venue-specific emergency plans and defined medical staffing for high school football games
Summary
House Bill 935, as amended, requires public and private high schools to include game-specific emergency-action-plan provisions—naming acceptable health personnel, allowing nearby ambulances to count, permitting volunteers and enabling ambulances to leave for calls; the committee passed the bill favorably as amended.
The Ways and Means Committee on March 11 passed House Bill 935 as amended, requiring public and nonpublic schools to incorporate venue-specific emergency-action-plan safety policies for high school football games.
Under the bill as amended, policies must require certain health personnel at each high school football game or that an ambulance with appropriate emergency medical services personnel be present. Acceptable individuals include a nurse (LPN or RN), a physician, someone licensed to provide emergency medical services (EMTs) and athletic trainers; the amendments clarify that those individuals may be employees or volunteers. The amendments also allow a nearby ambulance—within a specified acceptable distance—to qualify as being present at the game, and they permit the ambulance to leave if called to an emergency. The bill makes the same requirements applicable to private schools.
Delegate Ebersole, who presented the amendments, summarized the list of acceptable individuals and the distance standard. "And then we said, with an acceptable distance which we chose to be 3, road miles. If there's a station 3 road miles away, we did a little search and that's less than 5 minutes generally speaking," Ebersole said. She added the ambulance does not have to remain at the field while on call: "If it goes on a call, it can go. In other words, we don't want it to be locked down and not go save other people because it's at a football game."
Committee member Delegate Miller raised questions about how commonly schools already meet the standard and who would qualify under the bill's list of acceptable health personnel. "Can you go over the list of who would qualify because it sounded like they all had to be like EMS or medically degree certified not just... CPR and first aid training certified," Miller asked. Ebersole replied by listing the acceptable categories and confirming that volunteers who meet the listed qualifications (for example, a parent who is a licensed physician) would count.
Committee members also asked about liability and insurance; Ebersole said the bill does not modify liability or insurance requirements and that the amendments were broadened to reduce the risk that schools would forfeit games because they could not meet a narrowly defined requirement.
The committee approved the amendments and voted HB 935 favorably as amended.
