Dr. Laurie Romig is a board-certified emergency medicine and emergency medical services (EMS) medical direction physician. She received both her undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of South Florida in Tampa and completed her emergency medicine residency at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, MO in 1987.
Dr. Romig specializes in out of hospital emergency care, including fire rescue, ground ambulance, helicopter, and critical care transportation, along with the education of EMS providers and community members. She served the Pinellas County (FL) EMS system in various medical direction capacities from 1989 to 2012, including as the full-time medical director from 2002 to 2012. Pinellas County (FL) EMS, is an extensive EMS system in Pinellas County, Florida, responding to over 120,000 calls for assistance per year and utilizing over 1600 EMT’s, paramedics, critical care nurses, and medical control physicians, all under Dr. Romig’s oversight.
Along with her emergency department experience, Dr. Romig’s involvement with substance use disorders includes educating EMS providers about acute, out of hospital medical evaluation and treatment of substance use patients and their associated medical problems. As an EMS Medical Director, she was responsible for policies for patient and EMS provider safety, quality improvement activities, risk management, and liaison activities with other community healthcare services and facilities.
Dr. Romig has been very active as a leader in the State of Florida’s EMS Advisory Council and associated EMS constituent groups for over 25 years. EMS agencies in Florida are rapidly embracing opportunities to treat substance abuse disorders as community public health concerns and are building relationships with hospitals, public health departments, and other community mental health and rehabilitation programs to form the most effective systems of care possible for individuals with substance use disorders. Dr. Romig’s other interests include photography, reading, travel, and spending time with her family.