Pulsara Blog

"Always in Service."

That's the theme of the 2017 EMS Week, which comes to a close on Saturday. But before it's over, we wanted to take a moment to recognize the EMS professionals who whole-heartedly serve their communities, putting their jobs above leisure, family, and self. 

The Pulsara team is blessed to have some of the most talented, dedicated, and experienced EMS personnel on our own staff. "Always in Service" describes no one better than this crew who split their time serving in EMS roles while also giving their all to Pulsara and our clients ... all while balancing their own passions. Check out some of the things that make these team members unique -- as well as their SUPER impressive EMS track records -- below. 

As an emergency room physician, I experience firsthand the impact of outdated communication systems — how they hamper good patient care and challenge even the most talented, dedicated, and well-trained medical professionals. In emergency situations, when seconds count, fast and accurate communication between care teams can mean the difference between life and death.

Pulsara was featured last week in a news article on Australian news site, The Courier after Ballarat Base Hospital, Pulsara's second international hospital client, began a pilot of the platform. Ballarat will leverage Pulsara to receive real-time information about a patient’s condition from local paramedics to get the entire emergency department, cardiac, neurology and other specialists and departments on the same page.

Most medics have encountered a crashing Congestive Heart Failure (CHF) patient at some point in their career, and chances are not all of those cases were managed perfectly. This can be a challenging group to assess and treat, especially because your patient is likely very scared and anxious.

Pulsara has teamed up with EMS1 to produce an original video series of critical paramedicine tips and techniques, called Progressive Paramedicine. In this week's video, Pulsara's Brandon Means reviews three things to remember when managing the crashing CHF patient: 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

St. Elizabeth Healthcare, in Edgewood, Kentucky, decreased the time to treat critical heart attack patients by 30 percent.

Edgewood, KY – Mar. 30, 2017 – In the past year, St. Elizabeth Healthcare in Edgewood, Kentucky, significantly decreased the time-to-treatment for heart attack patients, following an effort by stakeholders from every part of the care team to collaborate and improve processes that speed up care. This improvement was due also in part to the use of a mobile app, Pulsara, which puts timely, clear information in the hands of everyone responsible for caring for the patient, both inside and outside of the hospital.

For patients who arrived at St. Elizabeth Edgewood via ambulance, the average time from first medical contact (FMC) — defined as the moment emergency medical services (EMS) first arrives at the patient’s side — to the administration of artery-opening treatment in the hospital dropped 30 percent, from 103 minutes in the first quarter of 2016 to 72 minutes in January 2017. The American Heart Association (AHA) recommends aiming for a time-to-treatment of less than 90 minutes because it has been associated with better outcomes for heart attack patients.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

[Bozeman, MT] — Mar. 23, 2017 — James Woodson, MD, Founder and CEO of Pulsara, was recognized as a recipient of an EMS10: Innovators in EMS 2016 Award at a ceremony at the EMS Today Conference & Exposition last month. Hosted by the Journal of Emergency Medical Services (JEMS) and sponsored by Physio-Control, a part of Stryker Corporation, the EMS10 awards recognize ten individuals who made significant innovative contributions in EMS in the previous year. Over 40 nominations were considered for this year’s award.

A panel of EMS professionals selected the ten distinguished winners, who “each displayed initiative, creative thinking, action-orientation and a desire to positively impact EMS, patients, and their communities,” according to JEMS.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

[Bozeman, MT] — Mar. 14, 2017 —Duke University School of Medicine researchers found that patients with stroke received faster treatment when emergency medical services (EMS) activated the stroke team from the field than patients who presented by other methods of arrival.

The researchers conducted a retrospective analysis of 12 major medical centers that used Pulsara’s Stop Stroke, a mobile application that allows EMS transporting a stroke patient to notify emergency department staff and stroke specialists with the tap of a button on a smart phone. Using data from March 2013 to May 2016, they found cases activated by EMS in the field resulted in significant reductions in door-to-CT scan and door-to-needle times as well as an increased likelihood of meeting door-to-needle goal when compared to cases activated in the emergency department.

Editor's Note: The following excerpt originally appeared on the Healthcare Informatics website on March 7, 2017, and the article can be read in its entirety here. Pulsara is humbled by the incredible care teams in Colorado Springs who are tirelessly working and innovating to provide the best possible care for their community. A vision without action is worth very little. It is the hard work and dedication of these teams that is truly making the difference in acute care and in the lives of patients.

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Hospital physicians and nurses know all too well that time can make a difference when treating patients suffering from a heart attack or stroke. Unfortunately, gaps in communication between emergency responders and hospital staff is a persistent and common problem and can slow down the process of getting accurate, pertinent patient information from the field, such as the emergency medical technicians and paramedics on the scene, to the hospital staff.

To tackle these challenges, hospitals from two different health systems have partnered with each other and with a dozen local emergency medical services (EMS) agencies to use mobile technology to coordinate their care teams to accelerate time to treatment for critical care patients and to provide better care for stroke and heart attack patients.

Why do we do what we do?

At Pulsara, our "WHY" is to empower TEAMS of caregivers to come together and achieve the best possible outcomes for critical patients as quickly as possible, and with reduced miscommunications and errors.

As clinicians, our "WHY" is to make a difference in the lives of all the patients and their families we touch.

For Pulsara staff and clinicians alike, our "WHY" is also to influence change where change is gravely needed. To move the needle and find new, better ways of treating patients.

One team has truly embraced this mission. The health system in Victoria, Australia, including the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, recently revealed an incredible telemedicine success story:

EDITOR'S NOTE: Special thanks to Kris Kaull, B.S., NRP, CCEMT-P, FP-C for writing today's blog post. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.

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This past week at the International Stroke Conference in Houston, Mission: Lifeline Stroke released two documents related to prehospital LVO care.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Special thanks to Scott Stanley for writing today's blog post. You can connect with him on LinkedIn. 

... No, it's not chocolates and flowers.

The medical research community is continually providing us with exciting new technology and clinical findings that can make our jobs in EMS easier and our treatments more precise. So why are we not always sharing these findings with our patients? Well I’m here to tell you, those 80’s parachute pants were great 35 years ago but it’s time to buy some new britches.

We make decisions all day, every day. Most of them are taken care of in our sub-conscience, and we don't even have to think about them. But others decisions are more complicated: If you were to have an emergency for example, where would you go for your care? Why would you choose that hospital? What about when you're choosing for your critical patient? Several factors play into this decision, but too often people use the wrong information to make that choice. As a matter of fact, according to a recent New York Times article, going to the wrong hospital could cost patients their lives! That's right. Choose the wrong hospital for your patient's condition, and they're three times more likely to die. 

EDITOR'S NOTE: The following content originally appeared on EMS1.com as paid content sponsored by Pulsara. Special thanks to our guest blogger, Drew Rinella for EMS1 BrandFocus. Drew is the clinical coordinator for Bonner County EMS in rural North Idaho. He is a paramedic, public servant, and competition shooter. Drew is an advocate for quality in EMS and also blogs his crusade against bad EKGs in product advertising. 

We’ve known for a while now that when EMS providers are properly trained, they perform at a high level when it comes to treating and assessing patients. For example, past studies have shown that paramedics who had formal training in identifying STEMI on a 12-lead ECG could do so with the same level of proficiency as most ED Physicians (1). The same goes for identifying stroke. A similar study showed that paramedics were on par with ED physicians when it comes to identifying stroke using simple stroke scales such as the CPSS or FAST (2). 

Recently in my travels I heard something that really stuck with me: “When a hospital goes the extra mile, patients will do the same.”

Think about that for a minute. Is your hospital one that truly goes the extra mile? What does that entail?

The best person to ask this question of is a Paramedic who services your hospital. There are several things that determine where a medic takes a patient who has trusted them with their lives: