MEDEX

I listened to a piece today working out broadcast on American Innovations podcast platform

currently mining for some pretty great pieces of information especially from the historical standpoint. Podcast I was today was on the innovation of the ambulance. And yes, the podcast did kind of cover the ambulance but also covered the whole or what it deemed the whole history of the paramedical program. And I think, the information was okay to a certain point. The kind of left out the entire Medex program which I thought was pretty interesting.

I think I've covered this to a degree in the past in earlier postings (I would have to go back and check) but in the early 70s I was involved with the neighborhood health programs which was an offshoot of Lyndon Johnson's great Society program. I was part of her crew that delivered medical and some psychological support to folks were low income and minorities in Southwest Idaho. We had our very own Medex person was José Rodriguez became a very close friend of mine from that period of my life. The Doc of our program, Clarence a McIntyre M.D. Was the brother of the economist from University of Colorado who helped develop that program. I was just fortunate to be a small part. Rodriguez was a Vietnam vet and a field medic. Rodriguez was one of the first classes to cycle out of Fort Sam Houston Medex program in the early 70s. The MEDEX folk eventually became the nurse practitioners. Not that it mattered because these folks were supposed to assist in delivering desperately needed medical services to low income and rural area people (which they did to a certain degree) but were soon gobbled up by the medical profession in private practice allowing these older Mds to greatly increase their practice and see more paying folk. They broke my doctor's heart.

Interesting enough I did not really realize that ambulances did not come in the service till about the same time I had my accident in 1966. Up until then many ambulance services were nothing more than hearses that weren't being used at the moment of need. Things change rapidly after that particular with the advent of Vietnam and again just the bucket load of medical folk, field medics with hundreds of not thousands of hours of hands-on experience. I guess they had to go somewhere. I wish I had the wherewithal and the energy to document this other side of the discussion of how the med X program came about. We're going to try for a link on tonight's page that will cover at least that part of the history of the nurse practitioner program in the United States…