Building a More Effective and Efficient EMS Quality Improvement System

At Community Ambulance, we’ve always felt that we provide high-quality medical care to our communities across several counties in Georgia. I certainly felt that way during my time here as a paramedic and field supervisor: We took education seriously, and we had quality compliance managers who were tasked with keeping an eye on our patient care reports (PCRs) to ensure we completed them properly and provided appropriate care. I’m sure most EMS organizations are currently in the same boat we were in a few years ago: We thought we were doing a great job, but did we really know whether we were, or how we could get better? The reality was, we had no real way of tracking performance, or any idea of what areas we needed to improve. After realizing that we lacked an efficient system for evaluating data we were collecting, even for critical emergencies like cardiac arrest, acute coronary syndrome (ACS) and major trauma, our leadership decided something needed to change. I was approached by my boss and asked if I would be interested in transitioning to a new quality improvement (QI) position. Like many others across EMS who are asked the same question, I had extensive experience in the field, but little training in QI. So obviously, I said yes. That was two and a half years ago. How We Got Started In order to do this right, we had to find a way to organize and analyze our data—and we were also coming to the realization that having myself, or even a team of people, review thousand...
Source: JEMS Administration and Leadership - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: Exclusive Articles Documentation & Patient Care Reporting Source Type: news