Yolo County now has a new medical director for the Yolo Emergency Medical Services Agency (YEMSA). The public was officially introduced to this new staff member during Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting.

YEMSA’s EMS Administrator Douglas Brim introduced Dr. John Rose of UC Davis Medical Center, who has been serving as the county’s contracted medical director for nearly 10 years.

Dr. Rose is a board-certified physician in emergency medicine and EMS, and he’s a professor of emergency medicine and practices medicine full-time at UC Davis Medical Center, where he is also the director of their EMS fellowship program.

According to Brim, Rose has been “on loan” from UC Davis to help provide services to the county for the better part of nine years after the county signed an agreement with the medical center.

“During those nine years, Dr. Rose helped pioneer cutting-edge EMS initiatives with YEMSA, including EMS protocols to use non-opiate pain medications for EMS treating patients with an opiate addiction, evidence-based updates to trauma care for patients, high-performance CPR protocols that have led Yolo County to have a higher rate of survival from cardiac arrests than the rest of the state and the nation,” Brim said. “Considering all of this, it’s probably no surprise that when YEMSA held their first ever competitive recruitment process for a direct contract with a medical director, Dr. Rose was easily selected to continue to be our medical director.”

The new agreement between Yolo County and Rose allows for YEMSA to work more directly with the UC Davis doctor, as he’s now considered a county employee rather than a contracted service provider through the medical center.

Rose thanked Brim for his introduction and then turned to the board to express his eagerness to continue the work he’s done for Yolo County over the past decade.

“I live in this community and live in the county, and it’s one of those things to be able to contribute to your own citizens like that and provide that care,” Rose said. “Within the state, we are probably one of the most forward and best practices out of any of the counties in California, and it’s a lot to do with Douglas [Brim], our great staff and wonderful community we have here.”