ACC to introduce new clinical data tool for EMS providers

Mar 7 2018

Every day across the United States, Emergency Medical Service (EMS) providers triage and safely transport myocardial infarction (MI) patients to the hospital. Currently, there are no nationally available clinical data tools in place that allow them to find out how these critical heart patients fare after they enter the hospital. But soon the American College of Cardiology (ACC) will launch eReport EMS, a new product that will allow them to access and assess this important information.

EMS providers are an important part of the care team and play a pivotal role in the care of heart patients. They must quickly and accurately assess and treat the patient, choose the best hospital to transport the patient to, alert the hospital and report critical data to them, such as ECG findings, patient allergies and more.

"eReport EMS data will help EMS providers and hospitals better understand how this care impacted the patient and discover new ways to strengthen EMS care, as well as help improve quality cardiology care measures overall," said William Oetgen, MD, MBA, FACC, ACC executive vice president for science and quality, education, and publications. "eReport EMS also bridges a gap in the continuum of care, so it now reaches from the first interaction the heart patient has with the EMS provider until that patient is discharged from the hospital."

Reports from eReport EMS are developed using data from the American College of Cardiology's NCDR ACTION Registry. The ACTION Registry is a risk-adjusted, outcomes-based quality improvement program that focuses exclusively on high-risk STEMI/NSTEMI patients. It helps hospitals apply ACC clinical guideline recommendations in their facilities and provides invaluable tools to measure care and achieve quality improvement goals. Currently, over 800 hospitals participate in the ACTION Registry nationwide.

Using eReport EMS, EMS providers can:

• Gain access to reports based on all ACTION records on cases they were a provider for, as indicated by their EMS agency identifier.
• View specially designed eReports that include selected metrics of aggregate performance of EMS care, hospitals and the overall system of care--information that is most important to EMS providers

Although they will not be able to access individual patient level data, eReport EMS will give EMS providers overall data on how their patients fare at a particular hospital. For instance, they'll be able to see if they correctly diagnosed patients, if their work was performed quickly and how many patients improved and went home.

eReport EMS will launch later in 2018, and will be available through a secure, password-protected online dashboard that EMS providers can access through a participating hospital. Information about how to access eReport EMS will be announced prior to the product launch. Requests to access eReport EMS can be emailed to [email protected].

"The American College of Cardiology is a home for the entire cardiovascular team, and EMS providers are a valued part of that team," Oetgen said. "We want to do an even better job in supporting them in their important work and help them in their efforts to continuously improve their processes of care for critical heart patients and to strengthen our entire system of cardiac care."