Orange County, Calif., Begins Field Implementation of EMS Access to Patient History via HIE

You and your partner respond to a 9-1-1 call for a woman with altered mental status. After ensuring there are no immediate life threats and completing your initial assessment, you attempt to get information about the patient's medical history, current medications and allergies. She isn't able to offer clear information on her current medications, and when you turn to the family, the patient's family member hands you a bag with at least 15 different medications. This is an all-too-familiar scenario for many EMS responders. EMTs and paramedics typically rely only on those on scene to volunteer critical medical information prior to treatment: the patient, family members, friends or others. A patient's past medical history is otherwise unknown, leaving EMS providers to start from scratch as they input the patient's data into their electronic patient care report (ePCR) system and, eventually, transmit relevant data to the receiving hospital via radio or cell phone. This traditional model is prone to errors and inaccurate data and is simply inefficient. In Orange County, Calif., however, it's a completely different picture following the field implementation of +EMS and the Search, Alert, File and Reconcile (SAFR) model for health information exchange (HIE), which provides a patient's medical information at providers' fingertips within seconds. To accomplish this, an established HIE is augmented by the alerting and bidirectional data flow capabilities in ImageTrend's Health Informat...
Source: JEMS Administration and Leadership - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: Documentation & Patient Care Reporting Administration and Leadership Operations Source Type: news