Best Practices - July 2010

Precious Resources: An innovative triage program strives to reduce costs and curb ambulance calls—all while improving patient care. By Jenifer Goodwin
The headlines are tragic, the photos grisly: ambulances with their sides torn off or roofs crushed, leaving patients and crews badly injured—or worse, dead. Every year, at least 50 people, including 14 paramedics and EMTs, are killed in traffic collisions involving ambulances nationwide, making motor vehicle crashes the primary cause of on-the-job fatalities, according to the EMS Safety Foundation. ....
read more >

BP INTERVIEW: Q&A with Greg Mears, M.D.—Associate professor of emergency medicine and director of the EMS Performance Improvement Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill By Jenifer Goodwin, associate editor
As an emergency physician who has been heavily involved in EMS for much of his career, Greg Mears, M.D., knows firsthand the importance of integrating EMS with emergency departments. Good communication between field personnel and hospital staff helps ensure that patients get the right care at the right time, he says. But determining exactly how to achieve the best outcomes requires careful study, which requires collecting data to assess performance and identify opportunities for improvement.......
read more >

Partners in Success: In Colorado, a hospital and EMS program work together to treat an increasingly important problem: stroke. By Mary Meyers
The Centura Health–Porter, Littleton and Parker (PLP) Adventist Hospitals’ EMS program in the Denver metro area has been providing medical direction, training and education to EMS personnel, including but not limited to fire and ambulance agencies, since the late 1980s. Porter Adventist Hospital serves the south Denver area, while Littleton and Parker Adventist Hospitals serve the rapidly growing areas between.......
read more >

QUICK LOOK: San Diego Wins $15 Million Grant to Improve Communications Between EMS and Hospitals
A consortium of San Diego hospitals and community health clinics was chosen to receive one of 15 federal Beacon Grants awarded to projects that advance the use of electronic medical records and health information technology. Among other things, the $15 million grant will help fund a software system, TapChart, that links EMS with hospital data systems and vice versa. TapChart was developed by San Diego Medical Services, a public-private partnership between San Diego Fire-Rescue Department and Rural/Metro Corp.Along with expanding prehospital emergency field care a.......
read more >

CAPITOL REPORT: EMS Lobby Flexes Its Muscles
One hundred twenty EMS professionals from 40 states and Puerto Rico—including directors, practitioners and educators from fire-based, government and nonprofit services—fanned out across Capitol Hill in May for 161 meetings with U.S. senators, representatives and staff members. The goal? To be seen as a force in Washington and to persuade congressional members to support three key EMS bills.“We are creating a cadre of real advocates, people who not only understand the issues but have the.......
read more >

RESEARCH MONITOR: MRSA May Haunt Firehouses, But Take Precautions When Disinfecting
We've known for some time that MRSA lurks in medical facilities, nursing homes and homeless populations, placing EMS responders and other personnel at risk of unknowingly transmitting the nasty antibiotic-resistant contagion. Now graduate research associate Jonathan Sexton and Kelly A. Reynolds, Ph.D., both at the University of Arizona in Tucson, have found MRSA—which kills about 19,000 people in the U.S. yearly—on commonly touched areas in firehouses. The…....
read more >

UP FRONT: Two Good Hands By Keith Griffiths
It was 50 years ago that the modern concept of CPR was born. And it was completely serendipitous. Three doctors, experimenting at a laboratory at Johns Hopkins Hospital, were inducing ventricular fibrillation in dogs. As described in Mickey Eisenberg’s excellent book Resuscitate!, Guy Knickerbocker, James Jude and William Kouwenhoven discovered that when they applied defibrillation pads forcefully to a dog’s chest, they achieved a pulse in the animal’s femoral artery—apparently rhythmic pressure on the chest increased blood flow. Their subsequent article, published in 1960 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, described their at......
read more >

RUMINATIONS: Do You Think Like a Leader or a Manager? By John Becknell
One of the most persistent deficiencies in EMS organizations is the lack of leadership thinking by the person at the top. Much of the time this deficiency is undetectable because leadership thinking is not needed in most of the day-to-day work of running an EMS organization. Rather, management thinking is needed: Managers think about tasks and get things done. They fill shifts, procure facilities and equipment, conduct employee reviews, and make sure budgets are followed, revenues are collected, and vendors and employees are paid on time. The industry.......
read more >

BP RECOMMENDS
Here are four books for your summer reading, recommended by people we admire, for the leader who wants to be challenged but also entertained.....
read more >

SUBSCRIBE TODAY!

click here

RFG Media 679 Encinitas Blvd., Ste. 211 Encinitas, CA 92024 Powered by Internet Production Inc.