Regional EMS Electronic Patient Care Reporting Program

About the Program

Category: Risk and Emergency Management (Best in Category)

Year: 2011

Emergency Ambulance service provided in Suffolk County through ninety-four separate and autonomous volunteer fire department and volunteer ambulance corps. Collectively these agencies cover 1.5 million people across 912 square miles of territory. There are more than 120,000 emergency medical alarms annually, and each requires documentation on the handwritten NY State Department of healthy approved Pre-hospital care Report. Time-consuming paper-based processes, missing and inaccurate information, and subjectivity of the author hinder patient care documentation and negatively affect the productivity of the workforce. Data returned to the country are outdated, reports use codes that are cumbersome to interpret and queries are limited to demographic data. This program established a unified and uniform standardized electronic reporting environment whereby EMS crews collect required patient care and emergency alarm data and document same on an approved electronic platform meeting NYSDOH and the National Emergency medical Services Information System’s required data elements. Real-time data collection and analysis of contemporary EMS response and clinical data can be processed via on-site terminals or remotely accessed by EMS system managers, quality assurance staff, and System and Agency-level medical Directors for review and permanent recordkeeping.