PRINCE FREDERICK — Four people in Calvert County are alive because paramedics could start a blood transfusion before they reached the hospital, according to Commissioner Catherine Grasso.
Speaking during commissioner comments at the Board of County Commissioners’ Oct. 20 meeting, Grasso said four residents so far would have died without the county’s whole blood program but instead walked out of the hospital in good shape. She credited the county’s fire and rescue clinicians and noted the board had voted to back the program.
The reason it matters here, Grasso said, is distance: Calvert is not near a major trauma center. For a patient bleeding heavily after a crash, shooting or other injury, the minutes spent on the road to definitive surgical care can decide the outcome. Grasso did not identify the patients or describe their injuries, and the county has not released program-wide outcome data.
How the program works
The Whole Blood Field Transfusion Program is run by the county’s Career EMS Division and Calvert Advanced Life Support. According to the county, career EMS supervisors have carried low-titer Type O positive whole blood since Nov. 15, 2025.
- Each supervisor carries two units, along with equipment to store and give the blood safely.
- Specially trained EMS clinicians give it to critically injured or ill patients before they arrive at the hospital.
- Inova Health System’s blood donor services supplies the units. Blood is rotated every 14 days, and unused units go back to Inova for hospital use so they are not wasted.
Whole blood replaces red cells, plasma and platelets at once, rather than in separate components, which is why trauma programs have moved toward giving it as early as possible to patients with severe hemorrhage.
First in Southern Maryland
When the county announced the program in February, it was the fifth prehospital EMS agency in Maryland authorized to give whole blood and the first in Southern Maryland, according to the Maryland Association of Counties. Nationally, it was the 270th agency to do so.
The case that helped make the argument for the program involved a Calvert County Sheriff’s Office deputy who was shot. He received whole blood at CalvertHealth Medical Center and survived, and officials said he likely would not have without it. Putting blood on EMS units moves that same treatment to the roadside.
Other Maryland counties have weighed the cost. Somerset County commissioners questioned the expense of an ambulance whole blood program this spring before reversing course in May and accepting a state grant of $58,338 a year for five years through the Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Services Systems. Anne Arundel County already runs a program, and Maryland State Police medevac helicopters also carry whole blood.
Calvert has not publicly reported what its program costs or how many patients have received blood since November. The supply depends on donors: Inova, which provides the units, has held blood drives with Calvert County EMS, and residents can find upcoming drives on Inova’s blood donation site.
