I received this E-Mail on Oct. 8, 2002 from Tom. I thought I would post it: (Once again, MCC Graduate Paramedics are changing the world!)
Peter:
I stopped by the website and noticed the alumni notes. I thought
you'd find it interesting to know how far away from Rochester
one of your graduates ended up.
I've been working in Latin America since 1999 and am currently
the president & ceo of Argentina's largest EMS service, Emergencias
Cardiocoronarias (ECCO), S.A. 911 services are highly deficient
in Latin America so most people subscribe to a private service.
We are a private subscription EMS and urgent care company serving
over 800,000 subscribers in Buenos Aires, Cordoba, Rosario and
Tucuman, Argentina. We employ over 1000 professionals and respond
to approximately 2500 daily requests for service. Our ambulances
are staffed by physicians and nurses. We also provide physician
home visits for urgent care and minor medical complaints. We
have both adult and pediatric divisions offering specialty services
in critical care, cardiology, internal medicine and pediatrics.
We also provide heavy rescue service staffed by RN/firefighters,
for the highway system surrounding Cordoba, the 2nd largest city
in the country with a population of about 2.5 million.
In January of 2001, I founded Unidad de Emergencias Medicas (UDEM),
Bolivia's first prehospital emergency service in the tropical
city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. We currently have over 25,000
subscribers to our emergency and urgent care service and also
provide on-site physician medical services to the country's three
major airports.
EMS is a little different down here, there are no paramedics
as the profession does not exist in this country. However, our doc's were excited
to learn to use their Lifepak 10's to perform diagnostic EKG's,
thanks to the MCC paramedic program. Since our prehospital
providers are physicians, our service, in comparison to the systems
in the U.S., has the tremendous advantage of providing definitive
treatment to patients without hospitalization for many diagnoses.
While I miss working as a paramedic, I have been able to apply
many of the prehospital care and service concepts learned at
MCC in the management of our high-performance EMS company. It's
good to see that your program is going strong, I owe much of
my success to the year+ that I spent in the course. Since U.S.
911 EMS is the gold standard for our service, we are always looking
for ways to enhance our staff's education and frequently invite
U.S. paramedics to Argentina for CME programs and professional
conferences. If any of your students or colleagues ever would
like to see a different way of providing EMS, they are welcome
to drop me a line.
Regards,
Tom Bonfiglio, BA, EMT-P
ECCO, S.A.
Bv. Illia 235
5000-Cordoba, Argentina
tom.bonfiglio@ecco.com.ar
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