Kinsie Clarkson

Imagine: In the midst of a pandemic, you're managing patient load across a state that covers over 261,000 square miles and is home to over 30 million people. Some of your hospitals have beds, but not enough nurses; some hospitals have enough nurses but are running out of beds. You need to disperse patients to hospitals with resources across the state, and fast. 

How do you do it?

Now, imagine you're trying to find a way to track patients during a mass casualty incident and enable better communication between first responders and the hospital. 

Is it possible to do using the same tool you used to load balance during the pandemic? 

That's exactly what the state of Texas has accomplished. Between load-balancing patients during the COVID-19 pandemic and reimagining MCI response, they've been leveraging a statewide patient wristband system, paired with Pulsara, to help track patients and consolidate communication in a crisis.

Patient tracking during MCIs and pre-planned events is a complex operation with many moving parts. Every incident is different and requires different resources, making planning for and preparing for incidents challenging. To set ourselves up for success, we need to practice the same way we respond. That's why a panel of experts from California, Colorado, and Texas believe that the answer lies in using the same tools to manage and track patients during a crisis as you do for everyday response.

In the webinar Streamlining Crisis Response, field experts Eric Epley, Dr. Jeremy DeWall, and Dr. Troy Pennington discussed how they've simplified communication and collaboration around patient triage, tracking, and reunification during MCIs and large-scale events. They revealed new game-changing solutions around patient load-balancing—discovered and implemented in response to the many communication and logistics challenges experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. All three experts and their healthcare systems have also been leveraging patient wristbands, paired with the Pulsara platform, to help track patients and consolidate communication in a crisis. 

Read on for the top 4 takeaways from this extraordinary discussion, and check out the full webinar recording below.

While no one wants to think about the probability of an impending disaster, emergency managers and healthcare professionals know that mass casualty incidents are an eventuality. It’s not if they’ll happen, but when. In order to prepare future healthcare professionals for that day, Texas A&M annually hosts the largest student-led disaster exercise in the world: Disaster Day. 

The Texas A&M School of Nursing started the event in 2008, and it has only grown from there. The event is held at Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service’s (TEEX) Disaster City in College Station. This year, over 700 students participated in the large-scale emergency drill — facing a myriad of disaster scenarios, all rolled into one: an earthquake, a shooting, and floodwaters caused by a tropical storm.

The drill allowed students to practice responding to the incidents from a wide range of angles, including triage, patient care, disaster management, and mental health support. “The scenario they created was absolutely insane—they’ll probably never see something that chaotic in real life,” said Brandon Means, Senior Vice President of Sales at Pulsara, and paramedic and flight nurse. “It went well and was a great sendoff for some of these students into the workforce.”

Nurses play a pivotal role in healthcare, guiding both patients and their families through some of the most challenging times with unwavering compassion and dedication. Nurses advocate for their patients, coordinate care among different healthcare professionals, and ensure that each patient’s journey is as smooth and comfortable as possible. From bedside care to large-scale health operations, nurses don't just perform tasks; they provide comfort, enact change, and save lives. This National Nurses Week, we at Team Pulsara wanted to take a moment to recognize nurses' profound impact on our healthcare system and the lives of the patients they care for.

As 2023 comes to a close, we're pausing to look back at the case studies and research findings published by Pulsara customers. From streamlining emergency response times to enhancing patient outcomes, the stories published this year showcase the transformative power of collaboration, cutting-edge technology, and the relentless pursuit of excellence. Join us as we explore the accomplishments of our customers in 2023, celebrate their stories, and highlight the results they've achieved this year!

Communication among interdisciplinary care teams is a necessity in delivering excellent patient care. Though mobile technology has become more common in various branches of healthcare communication, few have analyzed the process of implementing a tool that works across multiple teams and organizations. 

The Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice has now published the results of a study designed to determine whether it is feasible to implement a single, digital health communication application across multiple healthcare organizations and hospital departments, what the barriers are, which factors contribute to a successful implementation, and which factors are associated with clinicians' intentions to use the technology.

Authored by a team of Australian healthcare leaders, researchers, and clinicians, the study includes process analysis from researchers who implemented the Pulsara platform across EMS and hospital teams, as well as written feedback from EMS and hospital clinicians who participated in the implementation.

In 5 months, Baptist Health Medical Center - Little Rock reduced their average door-to-puncture time for stroke patients by 58% 

Baptist Health Medical Center in Little Rock, Arkansas, is an 843-bed medical center and certified Comprehensive Stroke Center. As the largest private not-for-profit hospital in the state of Arkansas, Baptist Health - Little Rock provides comprehensive services using the latest in innovative technology. 

Previously, the stroke team was notified about incoming patients through phone calls and text messages. The operator would use the paging system to activate a code stroke, and then an additional IVR code stroke as needed. Members of the stroke team would receive the page, which contained only the patient’s location, via text or phone call.

Though the system worked on a basic level, Sharon Aureli, RN, BSN, MSN, SCRN, CNOR, RNFA, CNL, and Neuro Program Line Manager at Baptist Health, knew that a more sophisticated communication system could help their teams reduce treatment times. “I always think there’s room for improvement,” she said.

Embracing Modern Technology Will Pave the Way for the Future of EMS Communications 

On February 15th, the National Association of State EMS Officials (NASEMSO) presented a webinar hosted by Corey Ricketson, Pulsara Sales Vice President - Texas, and Eric Epley, Executive Director of the Southwest Texas Regional Advisory Council (STRAC). During the discussion, Eric and Corey discussed what it takes to build a true system of care that scales.

During the webinar, they told the story of how COVID changed Texas's approach to patient communication, logistics, and load balancing, and how creating a statewide wristband system is revolutionizing their approach to patient care and large-scale incident response. 

Watch the full webinar below, and read on for the top four takeaways from the discussion!

Arkansas hospital achieves consistent <60 minute average door-to-balloon time for STEMI and 80% decrease in average door-to-CT time for stroke

National Park Medical Center (NPMC) is a 163-bed hospital that has been delivering healthcare to the community of Hot Springs, Arkansas, for nearly 70 years. Offering a full range of inpatient and outpatient services, NPMC, which is part of the Lifepoint Health family of hospitals, is also home to the Heart and Vascular Center of Central Arkansas. The facility was recently recognized for excellence through the receipt of Chest Pain Center Accreditation with PCI through the American College of Cardiology Accreditation Services. 

Previously, when the emergency department received an ambulance call that a patient was experiencing chest pain and possibly a STEMI, an ECG would be sent from the ambulance to the emergency department by fax. But the transmission wasn’t always successful, according to Emergency Room Director Priscilla Couch, RN, MSN. And even when the ECG did make its way to the ED, there were hiccups in communicating the information to vital members of the healthcare team. “Our ER doctor would call the cardiologist and try to explain the patient’s condition without a visual, which takes time,” recalls Couch. “Then, with limited information, the cardiologist would have to decide, well, is that a real STEMI or not?” That deliberation would leave Couch waiting before she put out calls asking cardiac cath lab staff, including an interventional cardiologist, radiology technologists, and a cardiac-care nurse, to assemble. “When a patient is experiencing a STEMI, those are precious minutes that are being wasted,” Couch says.

In an effort to improve patient care, National Park Medical Center chose to adopt Pulsara, a mobile healthcare communication program that unites care teams on a single dedicated channel for each patient.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Teller County, Colorado, had a successful community paramedicine program in place. But as the pandemic hit the U.S., they knew they'd need to leverage new tools to continue treating their patients. Fire and EMS leaders partnered with Pulsara to enhance their community paramedicine program with telehealth. Since then, the program has evolved into a thriving partnership between EMS and a local organization of board-certified emergency physicians, allowing them to work together via telehealth to help address healthcare disparities and improve access to care in rural areas.

In a recent webinar, EMS leadership in Teller County, Colorado, shared their experiences around building the program, and how they are using telehealth as a force multiplier to preserve resources while also better meeting the needs of their community. Here are 7 top takeaways from their experience. 

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Teller County, Colorado, had a successful community paramedicine program in place. But as the pandemic hit the U.S., they knew they'd need to leverage new tools to continue treating their patients. Fire and EMS leaders partnered with Pulsara to enhance their community paramedicine program with telehealth. Since then, the program has evolved into a thriving partnership between EMS and a local organization of board-certified emergency physicians, allowing them to work together via telehealth to help address healthcare disparities and improve access to care in rural areas.

In a recent webinar, Dr. Jeremy DeWall, EMS Medical Director at UCHealth Pike's Peak Regional Hospital, and James McLaughlin, Director of Community Paramedicine at Ute Pass Regional Health Service District, shared about their experience with building the program, and how they are using telehealth as a force multiplier to preserve EMS resources while also better meeting the needs of their community. 

A recent study published in the Medical Journal of Australia shows that longer ambulance offload times are associated with greater 30-day risks of death and ambulance re-attendance for people presenting to the emergency department with chest pain. 

The large population-based study analyzed a sample of patients who arrived at the ED with non-traumatic chest pain. The goal was to assess whether ambulance offload time "influenced the risks of death or ambulance re-attendance with chest pain within 30 days of the initial ED presentation.”

According to the study, increases in offload times have a direct impact on the outcomes of patients experiencing time-sensitive ailments—specifically chest pain symptoms, which may indicate a variety of cardiac issues. As a result, the study's authors recommend that "Improving the speed of ambulance-to-ED transfers is urgently required.”

Change is hard for everyone. It's difficult enough to enact across a single organization. So what do you do when change is not only necessary but needed across your entire region? 

These are questions that healthcare leaders from Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Des Moines, Iowa have recently grappled with. The Colorado Springs and Des Moines regions have a striking number of similarities. Both serve a population of around 700,000, have three health systems, and account for around forty EMS agencies. Both have also revolutionized their regional communication with Pulsara, which has allowed them to enable faster, better communication for their healthcare providers. 

Leaders from both regions recently hosted a webinar to share their challenges and successes in bringing a new communication system into their region, and what they learned in the process. In part 1 of our blog coverage, we reviewed six takeaways based on their experience. Watch the full webinar below, and check out these six additional takeaways for anyone considering how to approach change management across a region.

Change is hard for everyone. Very few people truly enjoy the process of changing the way things have always been done. As a result, establishing a new way of doing things can be an unpopular decision.

So what do you do when change is necessary? How do you make sure it's successful? Change is hard enough to enact across a single organization. How do you create successful change when it's necessary across your region? 

These are questions that healthcare leaders from Colorado Springs, Colorado and Des Moines, Iowa have recently grappled with. The Colorado Springs and Des Moines regions have a striking number of similarities. Both serve a population of around 700,000, have three health systems, and account for around forty EMS agencies. Both have also revolutionized their regional communication with Pulsara, which has allowed them to enable faster, better communication for their healthcare providers. 

Leaders from both regions recently hosted a webinar to share their challenges and successes in bringing a new communication system into their region, and what they learned in the process. Watch the full webinar below, and check out these six takeaways for anyone considering how to approach change management across a region.

Editor’s Update: As reported by JEMS.com on 6/28/23, the federal government is ending the ET3 program. According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, “This decision does not affect Model Participants’ participation in the Model through December 31, 2023.” Read the full article on JEMS for more details: ET3 Program Comes to an Abrupt End. Please be advised that Mobile Integrated Healthcare and Community Paramedicine are separate initiatives and are unaffected by the ET3 program termination.

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When the COVID-19 pandemic first surged across the U.S., it created many new problems for EMS organizations everywhere. Some patients infected with COVID-19 urgently needed care at the hospital, while others were best served by staying home. It was difficult to tell which was which. Patients with other ailments were stuck at home, unable to receive regular needed medical care. And on top of that, the pandemic was a major provider safety issue; medics and hospital staff put their lives on the line daily to care for patients, constantly risking exposure to the virus.

Austin-Travis County EMS (ATCEMS) based in Austin, Texas, knew they needed to deploy an innovative solution, and fast. They responded by forming what came to be known as the C4 unit: the Collaborative Care Communication Center.

The C4 is an elite team of twelve EMS-trained clinicians who manage calls and connect patients with a variety of resources. At the start of the pandemic, they began using Pulsara, a healthcare communication, telehealth, and logistics platform, to build better communication with their teams. Through Pulsara, they sent alerts to the hospital about crews bringing in COVID-19 patients, giving hospital staff more time to prepare. And since the providers on-scene wore heavy PPE, making it difficult to communicate verbally, the C4 was able to use Pulsara to facilitate communication for them and manage the case remotely.

But as the pandemic evolved, so did the challenges faced by healthcare providers. By the time ATCEMS was facing its third wave of the pandemic in August 2021, local hospitals were maxing out capacity and lacked both the beds and the bandwidth to care for every patient that came through their doors. ATCEMS knew they needed a way to reduce the burden on emergency departments.

EMS admins: Have you ever wished for an easy way to view all of your units, along with any information about the patients they're currently caring for? What about having the ability to track their movements and view whether the hospital has acknowledged them, and even see which hospitals are available, all from one easy-to-use dashboard?

Pulsara's browser-based command center enables supervisors to track units, access patient details, see hospital availability, and communicate with your team.

After streamlining communication for their stroke teams with Pulsara, Overlake Medical Center in Bellevue, WA reduced door-to-needle times for tPA patients by 31%.

Overlake Medical Center in Bellevue, Washington, is a 349-bed hospital serving the Puget Sound region since 1953. The hospital treats more than 245,000 outpatients and 18,000 inpatients each year, and is a Joint Commission-certified Advanced Stroke Center. 

As a thrombectomy-capable facility with a large staff of specialists, nurses, and more, Overlake Medical Center sees ~900 acute stroke cases per year. With this volume, providing time-sensitive care is of the utmost importance to producing positive patient outcomes. Overlake knew they needed a streamlined means of communication to help make existing stroke workflows more efficient. 

“With so many people in the system, unnecessary team members were being alerted for a stroke case, which added extraneous noise as they cared for patients,” said Overlake Medical Center’s Stroke Team leaders .

LewisGale Hospital Montgomery in Blacksburg, Virginia, recently achieved a record door-to-balloon time of 14 minutes for one of their STEMI patients—one of their fastest ever. 

LewisGale has been working to create clearer lines of communication between its team members. They implemented Pulsara to successfully create a streamlined process for team communication around potential heart attack patients. 

Dr. John Patterson, a cardiologist at LewisGale, described how Pulsara allows him to receive notifications and information about a new patient instantly: "With this platform, I have the ability to see the EKG and activate the cath lab. All of this happens immediately so that it shortens the length of time it takes from the time the patient starts having their heart attack to the time they arrive at our hospital, to the time that we fix it. All of these times get shortened significantly with a platform like this." 

In the wake of the global pandemic, hospitals worldwide are struggling to cope with many challenges—chief among them, severe staffing shortages. Two years of pandemic conditions have barraged hospital staff, bringing new and unyielding challenges to the whole care system. Clinicians are facing longer hours, fewer resources, more responsibilities stretched between fewer people, the relentless pressure of pandemic stressors and mitigation measures, lack of support or understanding from the general public, and ultimately higher rates of burnout.

As a result, hospitals are grappling with severe staffing shortages. According to a recent survey by Hospital IQ, 90% of the nurses in their survey sample are considering leaving the nursing profession within the next year, with 71% of nurses with over 15 years of experience considering leaving either immediately or very soon. 

While there will need to be an influx of new nurses to regain balance, not all strategies for coping with the shortage have to do with recruitment. Technology can help make complex and frustrating tasks more simple. And according to the Hospital IQ survey, that might just be the determining factor in whether or not nurses decide to stay in the profession.

By streamlining workflows, technology can save a great deal of time and energy for hospital staff, making cumbersome and stressful processes smooth and efficient. Here's how.

When first encountering a new patient, you have a lot of information to quickly relay to the rest of the care team. Thankfully, you've got the patient's driver's license, so that's one hurdle already overcome. But now comes the challenge of quickly entering all this information and passing it along to the rest of your team. 

But if you're using Pulsara, not to worry: we'd like to share with you a new feature that can make this process easy. Key identification data from a US driver's license can be automatically scanned into the patient channel using Driver's License Scanning.