By Joe Covelli, PAAW Executive Director

 

At its January 8^th board of directors meeting, the Professional Ambulance Association of Wisconsin approved its 2015 – 2017 strategic work plan.  The plan was developed on December 1, 2014 when association members, staff, consultants, and invited guests attended the all-day meeting.

 

The top priority calls for continuing to build momentum gained last year and introduce legislation in the current session to expand TRIP – Taxpayer Refund Intercept Program.  Currently, only municipal ambulance services can access TRIP and file with the state to collect unpaid transport bills from the patient’s tax refund.  PAAW is working with legislators to introduce legislation that allow ambulance services contracted by a municipality to provide 911 services the same TRIP collection benefits for unpaid patient transports.  The reception by legislators to the idea has been favorable.

 

Additional items in the strategic work plan include community paramedicine, Medicaid reimbursement rates, ongoing communications, member growth, and advancing EMS leader networking opportunities.  The Wisconsin Stars of Life Awards Program will change to an every other year event, with the next one being held in September 2015, and one honoree from the group advancing to the national Stars of Life in Washington D.C. in March 2016.

The MedEvac Foundation International has approved grant funding for Dr. Daniel Patterson to investigate sleep-wake patterns and real-time fatigue reduction in emergency medical service (EMS) clinicians.

The medical transportation community requires that emergency care be available 24 hours per day. Shift work requires the prehospital emergency clinician to diverge from normal circadian sleep cycles and be alert when the pressure to sleep is greatest. While recent data suggests a link between sleep, fatigue and safety in the EMS setting, the data are limited to cross-sectional designs and subject to recall and measurement bias. The proposed study will provide detailed prospective observational data to address questions pertaining to the relationships between shift duration, sleep/wake cycles and behavioral alertness.

The overarching goal of the study is to address the Foundation’s research priority of “Educational techniques and technologies aimed at improving patient care, critical decision making, safety, or other areas pertinent to transport medicine.” Dr. Patterson, along with several colleagues, intends to accomplish this goal by performing a multi-site study of air-medical EMS clinicians. The Foundation Board has approved Phase 1 of the study, which will involve a prospective observational study of sleep/wake cycles, shift work duration, intershift recovery, fatigue and behavioral alertness (i.e., psychomotor vigilance).

The analysis of Phase 1 data will focus on differences between 12-hour versus 24-hour shifts.

>> Read more

MTM schedules non-emergency ambulance requests for Medicaid and BadgerCare

Inadequate staffing at MTM Inc.'s call center in Madison appears to be the reason why more than 24% of people who called to schedule a medical ride in September hung up before getting through to a person. That's according to MTM's corrective action plan, obtained by the Public Investigator under a public information request.

MTM provides rides to Medicaid and BadgerCare Plus members who have no other way to get to their plan-covered services. Its contract with the State of Wisconsin caps the number of hang-ups at 5%. But in 2014, rates steadily climbed from 10.3% in March to 24.1% in September. Meanwhile, state officials sat by without any enforcement.

That's because MTM's contract says the 5% hang-up limit isn't enforced until the average hold time exceeds four minutes. The company came in under that every month through August.

However, according to newly released statistics, hold times exceeded the four-minute limit in MTM's contract in September. This triggered enforcement of both the hang-up limit and the hold time.

>> Read more

Source:  JS Online

Brian Goelzer was selected as the new executive director at Orange Cross Ambulance in Sheboygan.

 

He recently wrote, “On October 1, 2014 Orange Cross Ambulance and Plymouth Ambulance services became one organization. It is my goal as the new leader to build a positive culture for all employees and their families’ while paving the way to exceed patients’ expectations and become leaders in EMS.”

EMS professionals are a critical link in successful resuscitation from cardiac arrest. Approximately 400,000 Americans experience an out-of hospital cardiac arrest every year and only 10 percent survive. However there has never been a CPR course tailored to EMS professionals until now.

The American Heart Association released, for the first time, a new CPR course geared specifically toward BLS prehospital providers.

Basic Life Support for Prehospital Providers BLS PHP, released in October 2014, combines flexibility and customization to meet department and agency needs. The course is based on the 2010 American Heart Association guidelines for CPR and ECC and will be updated when the 2015 guidelines are released in November.

Why the new course?

The American Heart Association heard from EMS providers that the previous BLS Health Care Provider course was missing essential and realistic CPR training. The new BLS for Prehospital Providers course focuses on first responders and uses realistic EMS team approaches to respond to cardiac arrests in the field.

The new course format

The BLS for Prehospital Providers course consists of both online and classroom components, and the new format stresses the importance of transition of care from BLS to ALS EMS providers.

Online

The online portion is narrated and presents the cognitive information. Students must complete all the objectives in order to complete the online portion of the course, and cannot skip ahead.

The online course focuses on three core scenarios:

• Cardiac arrest in a car
• A child drowning in a family pool
• Cardiac arrest in a home bathroom

Students must pass the online exam to move on to the classroom portion.

Classroom

Students then attend the in-classroom portion, led by an American Heart Association BLS Instructor. The classroom portion features instructor-led discussions, debriefing, coaching and support for hands-on skills. The classroom is blended with skills tests from the current health care provider course, along with discussions and a six-person team resuscitation.

The course focuses on a high-performance team approach, moving from two rescuers, to six suggested roles for responders, depending on personnel available. Teams with less than six may take on multiple roles.

Key roles include a compressor, a team member to handle compressions, a team member to handle the airway, another team member to defibrillate/AED, a team leader to delegate roles and make decisions and lastly a team member to administer an IV/IO/medication. The team approach is similar to an in-hospital resuscitation.

Course materials

All materials exist in an online format. EMS agencies can purchase multiple quantities of online keys to access materials for their personnel, and schedule the classroom sessions with their in-house American Heart Association BLS CPR Instructor.

The American Heart Association’s BLS for Prehospital Provider is fun and interactive, and incorporates EMTs, medics, firefighters and police with real life scenarios.

Source:  EMS1 Danielle Cortes DeVito

The Critical Care Emergency Medical Transport Program (CCEMTP) course will meet every Thursday and Friday, 8 am – 5pm, beginning April 2, 2015 through May 21, 2015.

A nationally recognized training program Critical Care Emergency Medical Transport Program (CCEMTP®) offers experienced paramedics and nurses a foundation that will prepare you to become a critical care transport specialist. This intense 100-plus hour course, presented at Gundersen Health System in La Crosse, WI was developed by the Department of Emergency Health Services at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC); The curriculum has such an excellent reputation that it is accepted as the base course for many other state and national level certification training.

Course brochure containing further information and registration form can be obtained by contacting Rick Barton in the EMS Education Department at Gundersen Health System,rkbarton@gundersenhealth.org. or by phone at (608) 775-6315.

This continuing education activity is approved by UMBC, an organization accredited by the Continuing Education Coordinating Board for Emergency Medical Services (CECBEMS).

Course brochure containing further information and registration form can be obtained by contacting Rick Barton in the EMS Education Department at Gundersen Health System,rkbarton@gundersenhealth.org. or by phone at (608) 775-6315.

On December 1, the Professional Ambulance Association of Wisconsin’s Board of Directors, members, consultants, and invited guests met for a daylong meeting in Madison to review and discuss the Association’s current work plan.

On December 1, the Professional Ambulance Association of Wisconsin’s Board of Directors, members, consultants, and invited guests met for a daylong meeting in Madison to review and discuss the Association’s current work plan. 

 

During the six-hour meeting many items of success were highlighted, as well as areas to continue pressing forward and identification of new opportunities.  The Association will announce its 2015 - 2016 work plan in the coming months. 

 

The last time the Association met to formally write its strategic plan was July 2010.  The previous plan served the Association well in strengthening its brand and message, member communications, adding and retaining the services of two lobbyists, pursuing a stronger EMS legislative agenda, continuation of the Stars of Life awards program and more.

The Wisconsin Department of Health has re-posted the State EMS Director position.  The position was initially posted this past June, but since then and now the EMS Office has been upgraded from a unit to a section.  This change became effective October 1.  With that change also comes a pay grade increase, since the state EMS director position is also considered a section chief.  The salary is negotiable based on qualifications, but the range listed is from $54,876 to $90,548.

 

For more information or to apply, click here.  The job posting date closes December 16.

A Dutch engineer has created a flying defibrillator for emergency situations. The drone, called the Ambulance Drone, could be stationed at various points in a city. In an emergency, people on the scene can call it in and it arrives a few seconds later. The built-in defibrillator unit can be used by anyone and it allows doctors to monitor the situation after the shocks are administered.

The drone includes a webcam and loudspeaker and allows remote doctors to walk people on the scene through the process of attaching the electrodes and preparing the defibrillator.

The creator, Alec Momont of TU Delft’s Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, said that 20% of people can operate a defibrillator without instruction and the number rises when they have prompts from trained personnel.

In the engineer’s home country some 800,000 people suffer a cardiac arrest in the EU every year, and only 8% survive,’ Momont explains. ‘The main reason for this is the relatively long response time of the emergency services (approx. 10 minutes), while brain death and fatalities occur within 4 to 6 minutes. The ambulance drone can get a defibrillator to a patient inside a 12 km zone within one minute. This response speed increases the chance of survival following a cardiac arrest from 8% to 80%.’

The system is still in prototype stage but there is a good chance it could be launched in five years for about $20,000 each. Drones are still not allowed to fly autonomously so they can’t wing their way around downtown Delft with their helpful payload… yet. It will be interesting to see these robots flying around one day, dropping first aid when needed.

Source: Techcrunch.com

Mayo Clinic Health System Northwest Wisconsin region’s Ambulance Services will become part of Gold Cross Ambulance on Thursday, Jan. 1. This change affects Ambulance Services based in Barron and Osseo.

 

The integration will be reflected by changes in reporting structure and rebranded vehicles and employee uniforms during the first quarter of 2015. Ambulance Services employees will continue to be based at the Barron and Osseo hospitals, and their job tasks and responsibilities throughout the hospitals will remain the same. Mayo Clinic Health System and Gold Cross employees will remain Mayo Clinic employees. No employee will lose his or her job as a result of the integration.

This transition is the result of ongoing integration over the past 10 years and is similar to other integration throughout Mayo Clinic Health System, such as Information Technology and the ambulance service in Mayo Clinic Health System in Albert Lea, Minnesota joining Gold Cross in 2013.

 

“The goal is to reduce the effort and liability we have invested in operating a stand-alone ambulance service at Mayo Clinic Health System in Barron and Osseo by relying on Mayo Clinic’s ambulance service to provide infrastructure and expertise,” says Rita Sullivan, Administration. “This is more than a change in uniform and ambulance branding. It’s an integration of our patient care and safety culture at a time when Mayo Clinic is positioning itself for health care reform.”

 

This integration allows for coordinated medical direction and protocols, fleet management, materials management and other quality and safety initiatives.

The Northwest Wisconsin Gold Cross team will be led by Kirk Gunderson, Gold Cross. He will work with closely with operational leadership in Barron and Osseo.

 

Barron and Osseo’s ambulance services began serving their communities in 1966 and 1971, respectively. Gold Cross, which began operations in 1962 and became part of Mayo Clinic in 1994, has served the Eau Claire region since 1995. Gold Cross is a service of Mayo Clinic Medical Transport, which also includes Mayo One, Mayo MedAir and the Mayo Emergency Communications Center. Together, the team offers 143 years of emergency medical service and experience.