High Performance EMS

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Toward a Better Understanding of “Availability”

High Performance EMS

Many agencies simply default units that are on duty with a general “available” status whenever they are not in some active phase of a specific response. The common impression is that this is an unproductive time embodying only the cost of preparedness. Increasing pressure on limited EMS resources suggests benefits to a more detailed appreciation of the precise nature of any unit or crew in this generic status.

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Thinking “Appropriately” About Dispatch

High Performance EMS

The traditional method for planning EMS responses has always been a static process developed with simplistic rules using arbitrary times as the primary goal. Yet every dispatch decision must be made in real-time from a changing list of possibilities focusing on the potential impact of each option. Matching the rules of your decision logic with the actual process shifts the focus toward system efficiency and effective patient-centric outcomes.

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AIMHI Editorial on Expectations and Realities

High Performance EMS

Great OpEd published by AIMHI about how our industry is changing and leading to “EMS On Life Support: The Alarming Gap Between Expectations and Reality.” [link] I have been writing a lot this year that “ a stopwatch is not a valid instrument for summarizing the measure of care that a patient receives. ” What any administrator, or politician, should be concerned with is the quality care they are buying before the simplistic statistics they are generating.

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Sudden Cardiac Arrest Awareness Month

High Performance EMS

October is Sudden Cardiac Arrest Awareness month, so High Performance EMS and PulsePoint are encouraging everyone to locate and register Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs). By doing so you’re helping to build this network of life-saving devices. Every minute that a victim of Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA) goes without potential defibrillation, the chances of a responding EMS crew finding a shockable rhythm decrease between 7 and 10%.

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Defining Appropriate Responses in a Tiered System

High Performance EMS

Dispatching the right unit to an EMS call was much simpler when all resources had the same capabilities and a response time was the primary measure of success. It was a matter of determining which crew was available closest to the scene. Some computer-aided dispatch (CAD) software did better than others by considering the average travel time of an actual route instead of allowing nearness to be determined by a straight-line distance.

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Running Toward Disaster

High Performance EMS

Sadly, this is not an adventure story of heroic first responder actions on the scene of an emergency incident but rather about how current EMS operations are failing us and their missions. Across the country, a quarter of positions in the dispatch center , the folks we rely on to keep resources coordinated, are going unfilled. Recent annual surveys also show that over 10% of EMS clinicians will leave the field entirely each year.

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Decision Engines to Improve Performance

High Performance EMS

There is plenty of data in the world, the key to improving performance is to discover the right information and make an appropriate decision, based on facts, in time to change outcomes for the better. Computers are quite useful in aggregating and processing data to distill information in support of the decision-making process, but artificial intelligence and machine-learning has increased our expectations of cyber assistance.