Independent advocacy, not a government site. kyems.org, kydispatch.org and kynurse.org are not the Kentucky Board of EMS, the Kentucky Board of Nursing or the Kentucky Nurses Association, and are not affiliated with any PSAP or 911 center, EMS agency, hospital or the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Looking for a board? kbems.ky.gov · kbn.ky.gov
Rested drivers. Trucks that pass inspection. Staffed shifts and real breaks. Leaders who listen. It’s not too much to ask — it’s what a model agency does.
On the ground and in the air:
What every crew already knows
The late call at shift change that turns a twelve into a sixteen or a twenty-four into a thirty-six. The five pending non-emergent transfers out of district at 0330 after running all morning, day and night. The truck that gets one more run on a bad tire or with hot air in the box. Poor safety control. None of it is in the policy manual — and all of it affects the team.
From the field
The truck that will “make one more run.”
Lunch at hour nine, eaten in the cab.
Checking tomorrow’s roster to see who your partner is — and hoping it’s not the one everyone knows shouldn’t be driving.
Ask now
The standards
Policies an employer or a board can adopt without waiting for a new law. Most of this site.
Read the standards →
2027 session
Three bills
Small, specific fixes to statutes Kentucky already has.
See the bills →
2028 session
A seat at the table
Collective bargaining for EMS, Dispatch and Nurses in public employment. The hardest ask.
Why it waits →
These are asks of employers, boards and lawmakers. Most are not Kentucky law today, and most need no new law — an employer or board can adopt them. Where we talk about hours, we mean limits on what can be ordered, not on what anyone chooses to work — and extra work is paid fairly. The short version is the Kentucky EMS Bill of Rights.
Safe on the road
Time that is ours
Safe on every call
Speak up safely
Leaders who lead
Standards are what we want. Bills are how it happens. These three are small enough to pass in a 30‑day session, and the first one covers the Nurse riding in the back of our truck.
Assaulting anyone is already a crime: intentionally injuring someone is usually fourth‑degree assault, a misdemeanor (KRS 508.030). KRS 508.025 makes it third‑degree assault — a Class D felony, Class C during a declared disaster emergency inside the disaster area — when the person hurt is on its list. Two of these bills are about who is on that list.
Bill 1
Protect care wherever it’s given.
Statute. KRS 508.025(1)(a)3 — the healthcare‑provider clause.
Today. Item 5 covers EMS personnel certified or licensed under KRS Chapter 311A “if the event occurs while personnel are performing job‑related duties” — no premises condition. Item 3 covers a healthcare provider as defined in KRS 311.821 — a broad definition that takes in physicians, nurses, aides and hospital and clinic employees — or anyone employed by or under contract with a hospital, clinic, doctor’s or dental office, long‑term care facility or hospital‑owned outpatient facility, only “if the event occurs in or on the premises” of one of those facilities, or of a jail, prison or detention facility. Same ambulance, same patient: the Paramedic is covered on the road. The Nurse riding with them is covered on the hospital’s premises and again at the receiving hospital’s. Between them — on the road, at a scene, in a patient’s home — the statute lists no premises the Nurse can stand on. It never defines “premises,” and we have found no Kentucky court decision saying whether an ambulance counts; the bill ends the question. KBEMS itself puts that Nurse in the truck: 202 KAR 7:560 requires a registered nurse as the primary attendant on every pediatric and neonatal specialty‑care ambulance and allows one on adult critical‑care units. A nursing license is issued under KRS 314, not 311A, so item 5 does not reach them unless they also hold an EMT or paramedic card. The same list covers school employees and school bus drivers “acting in the course and scope of the employee’s employment” — no premises limit there either. A school bus driver is covered anywhere on the job; a Nurse is covered only on facility premises.
The change. Strike the premises limit for licensed and certified providers: cover a healthcare provider licensed or certified to practice in Kentucky while providing, or traveling to provide, patient care, on duty or off — an ambulance, an aircraft, a patient’s home, an emergency scene, a sidewalk. The KRS 311.821 definition reaches much further than that; limiting the change to licensed and certified providers keeps the bill small.
Why it can pass. It reaches transport and flight Nurses, home health and hospice, interfacility teams, every Nurse who rides with a crew — and the off‑duty Nurse who stops to help a stranger. It asks for parity with a protection the legislature already extended to EMS. It requires no appropriation and creates no new program; like HB 188, it would carry a corrections impact statement (HB 188’s was rated minimal to moderate). Even the federal bill the Emergency Nurses Association is backing this year, the Save Healthcare Workers Act (H.R. 3178 / S. 1600), stops at hospital personnel. Kentucky can reach the truck.
Bill 2
Finish HB 713, and make it reach the truck.
Statute. HB 713 (2026) and KRS 216.701–709, workplace violence in health facilities; KRS 216B.015, the definition of a health facility.
Today. KRS 216.701–709 (2023) already requires every health facility to assess workplace‑violence risk, keep a safety plan with appropriate representation from all types of workers, train workers within 90 days of hire and annually, keep incident records for five years and follow up with the person hurt — and “health facility” under KRS 216B.015 includes ambulance providers. But “workplace” means property “owned or leased by the health facility at which the official business of the health care worker is conducted,” and the reporting and records duties in KRS 216.709 reach only acts “on the health facility’s premises”: whether an ambulance counts is unstated, and a patient’s home or a roadside plainly does not. And under KRS 216.703(3) the cabinet must accept an accredited or Medicare/Medicaid‑certified facility as compliant whatever its plan says; the annual audit in 216.703(2) cannot find otherwise. HB 713 (2026), as passed by the House, would have added a posted felony‑warning notice in every facility, required facilities to tell workers when the plan changes, and required them to tell the person involved in an incident what was done and what is planned. It would also have reshaped the safe harbor: Medicare/Medicaid‑certified facilities would have had to attest each year to their plan, training, reporting system, anti‑retaliation policy and incident reviews; accredited facilities kept it with no attestation; the assisted‑living and state‑supplementation safe harbors ended; and the cabinet could have required full compliance on evidence from a licensure survey or a substantiated complaint. It also repealed the cabinet’s annual audit and its duty to issue guidelines. It passed the House 98–0 on March 9, 2026 and was never taken up in Senate Health Services.
The change. Refile HB 713’s worker‑facing provisions: the posted notice, notice of plan changes, and telling the person involved what was done. Add four things: define the workplace — and the “premises” in KRS 216.705 and 216.709 — to include an ambulance service’s vehicles and any scene where a crew is working; give KBEMS authority to verify the plan and training at the inspection it already conducts before each annual license renewal (202 KAR 7:501); take ambulance services out of the KRS 216.703(3) safe harbor, so what KBEMS finds counts; and require the plan to be written with the meaningful participation of direct‑care workers.
Why it can pass. The House has already voted for the worker‑facing parts once, unanimously. The rest is one definition, one line of authority for an inspection that already happens, one exception to the safe harbor, and one phrase — “meaningful participation” — taken from the federal bill (H.R. 2531 / S. 1232) that the American Nurses Association and the Emergency Nurses Association are backing.
Bill 3
Name the dispatcher.
Statute. KRS 508.025, assault in the third degree.
Today. It names peace officers, firefighters, rescue squads, EMS personnel certified or licensed under KRS Chapter 311A, healthcare providers on facility premises, school staff and others. Public safety Telecommunicators and 911 Dispatchers are not on the list. KRS 311A does not certify them; they are certified by the Kentucky Law Enforcement Council under KRS 15.560.
The change. Add one line: a telecommunicator as defined in KRS 15.530, or a person performing emergency medical dispatch for a licensed ambulance provider, if the event occurs while performing job‑related duties. The first term is already defined in law and covers public employees; the second needs a definition so private‑service dispatchers are not left out. Nothing else in the statute moves.
Why it can pass. HB 188 (2026) widened one item on this same list — healthcare providers working in jails and detention facilities — and added jailers to peer‑support programs. It passed the House 97–0 and the Senate 38–0 and was signed on April 3, 2026. Same statute, same committees (House and Senate Judiciary), same path.
The long game. KRS Chapter 345 gives collective bargaining to firefighters and names no one else (police in Louisville and Lexington bargain under separate statutes, KRS 67C.402 and 67A.6902) — and only in Louisville Metro and cities that opt in. Adding EMS, Dispatch and Nurses in public employment, and the counties, districts and hospitals that employ them, is the hardest ask on this site and a 2028 long‑session bill. We say so plainly, and we put the three above first. We are not the only ones asking: the Kentucky Education Association’s 2026–27 legislative program seeks collective bargaining for all school employees.
Ten minutes to help these pass → · Read the draft bill text →
The Commission on Accreditation of Ambulance Services (CAAS) holds agencies to national standards — including a culture of safety and ambulances built to a safety standard. Is your agency accredited?
The state EMS directors have said much of this too. The National Association of State EMS Officials, whose members include Kentucky’s state EMS office, has passed resolutions on Project 25 compliance (2009), plain‑language communications (2008), EMS and public‑safety communications and air medical (2006) and ambulance crash‑testing standards (2014); it wrote the Model Rules for Ambulance Vehicle Design (2012), the EMS Workforce Planning and Development Guidelines for State Adoption (2014) and the Fatigue in EMS guideline (2018), and it held its fall 2015 meeting in Louisville. We are asking for what the profession’s own officials have already resolved.
CAAS and NASEMSO do not endorse this site. Resolutions and project dates: NASEMSO, 40 Years (2022), pp. 52–56.
Flight Nurses, Flight Paramedics, Flight EMTs and Pilots land at night beside power lines, towers and cranes they can’t see. Orange marker balls are cheap. Wire strikes are not.
Owenton, Kentucky · October 7, 2024
A Pilot, a Flight Nurse and a Flight Paramedic were killed when their helicopter struck a guy wire on a 601-foot tower beside the high school landing zone. Daylight, clear skies at the nearest weather station, the sun 18° above the horizon. The NTSB’s final cause is still pending, and its preliminary report does not say whether the guy wires were marked. Wires near landing zones should be marked so crews can see them.
Where
Near helipads and landing zones, and over every river, valley and highway.
How
Power lines: orange, white and yellow spheres about 200 feet apart (§11.3). Guy wires: the FAA warns that “the guys of a structure are difficult to see until the aircraft is dangerously close,” and recommends sleeves and orange balls on the guys of weather towers under 50 feet (§2.7). All of it is guidance in AC 70/7460‑1N, not a rule — we ask for marking near every landing zone.
Cranes too
A crane can stand up beside a helipad in a morning. The FAA’s guidance for cranes is orange paint or flags by day and red lights after sunset when the boom can’t be lowered (AC 70/7460‑1N, Chapter 14), and a builder must notify the FAA of a crane over 200 feet or one near an airport or heliport with an instrument approach (14 CFR 77.9).
Keep them up
A faded ball is a missing ball. Inspect and replace.
Map them
One shared hazard map — wires, towers and cranes — relayed by dispatch on every air request and updated the day a crane goes up.
Crews, families, patients and neighbors. Your name stays private unless you choose otherwise. How we handle your information.
Who writes this
People who work in Kentucky emergency care. We don’t sign our names: speaking up at work can cost people their shifts, their unit or their job, and fixing that is one of the standards above. So don’t take our word for it: the bills link to the statutes they rely on, and the draft bill text quotes the language they change, word for word. If something here is wrong, write to info@kyems.org and we will correct it and date the correction under Updates.
This is your site. It belongs to the EMTs, Paramedics and flight crews of Kentucky and the people who ride with them, and its only job is to be your voice. If a standard is wrong, missing, or not how it works at your service, say so: write to info@kyems.org from a personal address. What you send in decides what gets published.
Updates
November 1, 2026 — Hours standards reworded: limits on what can be ordered, not on what anyone chooses to work, with fair pay for extra work and a fatigue policy tied to the national EMS guideline. Added the Kentucky EMS Bill of Rights with organizational endorsements, a Frankfort visiting guide on the take‑action page, the school‑bus‑driver comparison, construction cranes among the landing‑zone hazards, the pending federal bills by number, and an open invitation for your input under Who writes this.
October 30, 2026 — Corrections and additions. Tightened the bill summaries against the statutes; corrected the FAA wire‑marking citation; reworded the on‑call standard, which overstated federal wage law; added draft bill text, how this fits together and who writes this.
October 29, 2026 — Launched. Added Three bills for 2027, a take‑action page with a printable one‑pager, a privacy page and a security contact.