(YeshivaWorldNews)—An office worker could be suffering from a heart attack, while someone who could save his life might be at a meeting on a floor below. How to tell him to get upstairs and help the victim? Jersey City Mayor Steven M. Fulop, the leadership of Jersey City Medical Center, and United Rescue believe that making that happen is the difference between life and death, and that’s why the city adopted United Hatzalah of Israel’s unique EMS model.
When Fulop heard about the United Hatzalah model in Eli Beer’s talk at TEDMED, he knew he found a partner in his passion to find an even better and faster way to save more lives in his state. Last year Beer also toured rescue services in Bergen County, including the Bergenfield-Dumont rescue squad. “We have seen how effective this program is in Israel and we are excited to be the first city in the United States to launch such an innovative, life-saving program,” said Fulop.
Jersey City Medical Center (JCMC) EMS is one of the top-rated EMS providers in the country according to Journal of Emergency Medical Services. It focuses on the strategic dispersal of emergency response resources, and utilization of demand analysis technology with a highly trained and motivated team of responders, and is strikingly similar to the United Hatzalah strategy. United Hatzalah revolutionized the provision of emergency medical response in Israel with its “flash-mob” of ambucycles, LifeCompass GPS technology, and community-based rescue volunteers.
The program is now known as Community-Based Emergency Care (CBEC) and will be organized under the United Rescue banner. The goal is to ensure that there is always a cadre of trained and equipped volunteers who can be instantly located and dispatched by the 911 operator to any scene. In an emergency, residents will call 911, and dispatchers will immediately deploy an ambulance and a CBEC team. CBEC volunteers stabilize a patient’s condition until EMS techs arrive on the scene. They want no more than 150 seconds to pass from the time of the emergency call to treatment.
“It took a lot of drive and chutzpah to get United Hatzalah launched in Israel and now that it has proof-of-concept, we are confident it will have similar, if not greater, success in Jersey City,” said Eli Beer, founder of United Hatzalah. The CBEC program under United Rescue will work hand in glove with JCMC EMS to benefit the diverse population of Jersey City. Beer noted that existing Hatzolah organizations came from an idea over 40 years ago that came from the creative, practical, and unstoppable vision of Hershel Weber in Williamsburg. Hatzolah still provides highly effective services for Jewish communities in New Jersey, New York, and around the world.
