AUGUSTA — Two Bangor medical professionals were presented with Maine Emergency Medical Services awards by Gov. Angus King on Wednesday in recognition of their leadership and innovation in contributing to the state’s EMS system.

Kevin McGinnis, former state EMS director and chief executive officer of the Bangor-based MedComm, a medical communications center that will open at the end of this month, received the 1997 EMS Governor’s Award. And Dr. Norman Dinerman, director of MedComm, chief of emergency medicine at Eastern Maine Medical Center, and former state EMS medical director, received the 1997 EMS Medical Director’s Award.

The State House ceremony was part of National EMS Week activities across the state.

Dinerman was cited by Jay Bradshaw, Maine EMS director, as the emergency medicine mentor for Maine “who has harnessed the creativity of other physicians for the benefit of the acutely ill or injured throughout the state.”

Dinerman is a well-known EMS physician and lecturer and a frequent contributor to the professional literature of the EMS field. He sits on a variety of professional boards and is a consultant to federal EMS efforts. Dinerman was chief of emergency medicine at the Denver General Hospital and leader of a progressive EM system in that city before coming to Bangor.

McGinnis directed Maine EMS, a bureau of the State Department of Public Safety, for 10 years. He also served as interim director of the department’s Enhanced-911 development program.

Maine became the first state in the nation to have statewide EMS treatment protocols under McGinnis’ direction. Those protocols have been recognized nationally as setting standards. A spinal injury management protocol that allows emergency medical technicians to better judge the need for immobilizing an injured patient on a backboard and with a neck collar was the subject of an article in a national EMS journal.

McGinnis also created the Comfort Care/Do Not Resuscitate program to allow ambulance personnel to treat the terminally ill more effectively. In 1990, McGinnis initiated the Journal of Maine EMS as a means of communication among emergency physicians, nurses, trauma teams and EMS personnel. He also helped speed up Maine’s Enhanced-911 project and got public safety officials involved in the process.

McGinnis has served as chairman of the National EMS Alliance for two years and is past chairman of the ASTM Committee on National EMS Standards Development, and continues to consult for federal agencies on EMS issues.

Before he was state EMS director, McGinnis was a hospital emergency department director at a rural teaching hospital and a regional EMS coordinator. He holds a master’s degree from Cornell University in hospital and health services administration and a bachelor’s degree from Brown University in health care delivery systems.

McGinnis’ work on a full-service statewide medical communications center resulted in the MedComm Medical Access Point, a communications center at 6 State St., Bangor.