In a historic victory for urban healthcare and emergency medicine, Newark’s University Hospital announced today that it has become the first emergency medical service (EMS) program in the entire United States to receive formal accreditation from the Association for the Advancement of Blood & Biotherapies (AABB) for its pre-hospital blood transfusion program.
The prestigious, inaugural national accreditation cements University Hospital’s position as a premier global leader in trauma care. The designation officially recognizes the hospital’s EMS crews, blood bank, and advanced laboratory divisions for meeting the highest medical quality and safety standards for blood transfusions performed entirely outside of a traditional hospital environment.
For residents across Newark’s five wards, this means that world-class, life-sustaining medical interventions are no longer locked behind emergency room doors—they are actively riding on the city’s streets and flying through the skies.
Extending the Golden Hour Directly to the Streets
In emergency medicine, the “Golden Hour” is the critical window of time immediately following a traumatic injury where rapid medical intervention can mean the literal difference between life and death. For patients suffering from severe blood loss due to gunshot wounds, vehicular accidents, or extreme trauma, waiting until an ambulance navigates traffic to reach a hospital can frequently result in fatal shock or irreversible organ failure.
Pre-hospital blood transfusion programs shatter this barrier. They empower field paramedics to administer whole blood transfusions directly to patients at the scene of an emergency or during transit. By deploying whole blood on both ground EMS ambulances and New Jersey State medical helicopters, University Hospital has successfully brought the clinical power of an emergency room directly to the point of injury.
“University Hospital is proud to be the first-in-the-nation with a nationally recognized program for initiating blood transfusions in the field – extending our world-class trauma care even further into the community and dramatically expanding our opportunities to save lives,” said Carole Johnson, President and CEO of University Hospital, Newark. “Today’s announcement marks an important recognition for our EMS, lab, blood bank, and trauma teams who are consistently working together.”
Setting the Blueprint for American Emergency Medicine
The AABB is an international authority focused on advancing health through rigorous, evidence-based standards in transfusion medicine. Securing its accreditation is a notoriously difficult feat, requiring strict adherence to quality control, temperature monitoring, and flawless cross-departmental execution.
The achievement is especially timely. The first edition of the AABB Standards for Emergency Prehospital and Scheduled Out-of-Hospital Transfusionsofficially went into effect on July 1, 2025. University Hospital aggressively aligned its protocols to these newly minted national guidelines, outpacing thousands of EMS systems across the country to secure the inaugural title.
“We are honored to be the first pre-hospital blood transfusion program in the country to achieve this important milestone,” said Jason Brady, Executive Director of University Hospital EMS. “This accreditation confirms that our community is receiving world-class, lifesaving care the moment our paramedics arrive on the scene.”
