Ohio legislation may allow EMTs to draw blood

July 14, 2009 04:44 AM

The Columbus Dispatch

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Emergency medical technicians need not be worried and upset about a bill in the General Assembly that would allow them to draw blood from drunken-driving suspects in crashes.

The legislation, which passed the Senate and is now in a House committee, would simply allow EMTs to draw blood. It does not compel them, nor does it force local police and fire departments or the Ohio Department of Public Safety to change their policies to require these workers to draw blood at accident scenes. If the bill passes, agencies employing EMTs can make their own decisions about whether medical workers will get involved.

As it stands, only blood samples drawn by police, nurses, doctors, phlebotomists, chemists and qualified technicians are admissible in court as evidence against a drunken driver, and those are the only workers who qualify for immunity from civil and criminal liability for taking samples.

Sen. Timothy J. Grendell, R-Chesterland, wants to add emergency medical workers to that list because, he said, in a few cases in his district near Cleveland, EMTs did happen to draw blood at crash scenes, but courts ruled those samples to be inadmissable as evidence in drunken-driving cases.

Grendell added the language to Senate Bill 58, introduced by Sen. Jim Hughes, R-Columbus. Hughes’ bill, which stemmed from an unrelated issue, makes it a crime for anyone but medical personnel, the authorities or someone with express permission to collect another person’s bodily fluids or tissue.

The State Board of Emergency Medical Services isn’t happy about Grendell’s addition. Officials wonder how the chain of custody for the sample will be assured, whether EMTs would have to testify in court and whether taking blood samples could interfere with patient care.

These are all good questions, but this law isn’t designed to settle those things. Those rules would have to be hashed out by cities and others who employ EMTs.

If fire departments choose to implement policies in which EMTs draw blood at the scene of drunken-driving accidents, that’s their business.

But the capability of first responders to take blood, especially in situations where evidence needs to be gathered quickly, would be another good tool to use in getting drunken drivers off the roads and behind bars.