Pulsara Blog

Editor's Note: On July 21st, 2023, EMS1, Fitch & Associates, and the National EMS Management Association released their annual EMS Trend Report, proudly sponsored by Pulsara. Because the articles and advice found within contain such critical subject matter, we've elected to publish each segment one at a time here on our blog. Read, enjoy, share, and take to heart the following information brought to you by the most prestigious thought leaders in EMS. Today's entry is written by Anthony Minge, EdD, senior partner at Fitch & Associates. 

A closer look at the causes and effects of pressure, strain, and anxiety on the EMS workforce

Stress is taking a monumental toll on EMS. This year’s EMS Trend Survey found more than 80% of respondents experience moderate job stress, with 11% categorizing it as extreme. Over 40% of those completing this year’s survey felt that stress is negatively impacting their professional development, 30% feel it is negatively impacting the quality of service they provide, and more than 50% feel it is having debilitating effects on their health.

Looking to enhance your EMS team’s ability to coordinate care and communication during Mass Casualty Incidents (MCIs) and preplanned large events? Join our upcoming webinar where an expert panel of EMS leaders from TX, CO, and CA will share their insights and strategies on how to effectively streamline communication and improve patient outcomes.

Through case studies, discussion, and answering your real-time questions, learn how today’s leaders are tackling the distinctive challenges in crisis response to provide real-time connectivity among various teams, secure messaging, and shared patient view for improved situational awareness. We’ll discuss the new world of coordinating resources and triaging patients during MCIs, and how it has simplified communication and collaboration during large events, ultimately resulting in improved patient outcomes.

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to learn from the best and enhance your team’s ability to coordinate patient care, communicate with other EMS teams, and make critical decisions with confidence and ease. Register now and get ready to take your skills to the next level!

WEBINAR EVENT DETAILS

Date: Friday, September 29th, 2023

Time: 12 PM ET |  11 AM CT |  10 AM MT |  9 AM PT

Cost: FREE

Webinar Recording? Yes. If you can’t attend the live event or want to watch it again, all registrants will receive a link to the live recording after the event.

GUEST PRESENTERS: 

• Eric Epley, Executive Director, Southwest Texas Regional Advisory Council (STRAC)
• Troy Pennington, DO, MS, FAAEM, Diplomate of EMS, EMS Fellowship Director at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center, Colton, CA; Associate Clinical Professor of Emergency Medicine; Medical Director for the San Bernardino County Fire Department, Mercy Air Region 2 - Southern California, and Baker to Vegas Law Enforcement Relay Race; and Technical Reserve for the Fontana Police Department, Inland Valley SWAT
• Jeremy DeWall, MD, FAEMS, NRP, EMS Medical Director at UCHealth Pikes Peak Regional Hospital, CO

HOSTS:

• Brandon Means, VP of Medical Operations at Pulsara
  
• Kris Kaull, Chief Growth Officer at Pulsara, Critical Care Flight Paramedic, and founder of paramedic.com and co-founder of EMS1.com

- CLICK HERE TO REGISTER NOW -

August Recap

Our teams exhibited at three conferences across the U.S. last month—the 6th Annual MARATP Conference, the FSR 11th Anniversary Meeting, and the UCHealth Trauma, Critical Care, and EMS Symposium—and are ramping up for a busy autumn and winter. Before we look to the last months of the year, here's what team Pulsara was up to in August. 

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.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article originally appeared on FireRescue1.com. Special thanks to our guest author, Courtney Levin, for FireRescue1 BrandFocus Staff.

Colorado Springs Fire Department has significantly improved patient outcomes with Pulsara

When you work in a busy fire department, it seems as if there’s never enough time to learn and implement a new piece of technology. Such was the case for Colorado Springs Fire Department (CSFD), an agency that currently encompasses 23 stations with over 500 firefighters. Serving the second largest city in Colorado, they run about 80,000 calls per year across a large service area of over 195 square miles. 

Despite having a full plate already, CSFD has long recognized the importance of continuously striving to improve patient outcomes. After hearing about Pulsara, a communication tool that works to bridge gaps between providers, they realized their department could benefit from such technology.

“I think the transition of care and communication between prehospital medical care and a hospital-based system is fraught with peril,” said Matthew Angelidis, M.D., co-chief medical director at CSFD. “As you’re trying to give a report and information about a patient and the care that’s been rendered to a health care provider in a hospital, lots of information can be lost in translation. I think we struggled to have effective, high-quality patient care information communicated between firefighters and paramedics and the hospital-based resources the patients were transitioning to.”

Joey Buttenwieser, a lieutenant at CSFD, agrees communication challenges were a huge area of opportunity for their agency. He notes that consistent communication has now become the norm since the department implemented Pulsara.

“This system helps first responders talk to a handful of our medical directors directly through Pulsara instead of calling the hospital and getting whichever emergency room doctor happens to be rotating through that day,” said Buttenwieser.

Editor's Note: On July 21st, 2023, EMS1, Fitch & Associates, and the National EMS Management Association released their annual EMS Trend Report, proudly sponsored by Pulsara. Because the articles and advice found within contain such critical subject matter, we've elected to publish each segment one at a time here on our blog. Read, enjoy, share, and take to heart the following information brought to you by the most prestigious thought leaders in EMS. Today's entry is written by Kerri Hatt, Editor-in-Chief of EMS1.

Adopting programs to improve service delivery and agency culture

Our goal in measuring and analyzing EMS trends is to identify areas for growth: both where it is needed and where it is succeeding at improving operations. When agencies and providers are feeling the brunt of staffing challenges in levels that have nearly half of providers (45%) considering leaving EMS, and 97% of agencies struggling with turnover – it’s time to change the way we deliver EMS.

In year-over-year comparisons, we’ve seen incremental growth in agencies adopting alternate service models and tools, including telemedicine, nurse triage of 911 calls, alternate means of transportation, and alternate destinations. By getting patients to the right definitive care and reducing the volume of patients delivered straight to the ED, patients are better served and turnaround times are decreased, reducing the burden on providers.

While these downstream impacts of adjusting service delivery will improve EMS for providers, we cannot ignore the impact leadership has on their stress. EMS Trend Survey respondents made that impact loud and clear, citing agency leadership and their direct supervisors as the biggest drivers of stress in EMS.

We asked a panel of EMS innovators and experts to share their experiences, successes, and tips for adopting programs to both improve EMS service delivery and agency culture – creating a safe space where wellness is appreciated, and seniormost staff lead the ship – rather than create additional stress. Here’s what they have to say.

Editor's Note: On July 21st, 2023, EMS1, Fitch & Associates, and the National EMS Management Association released their annual EMS Trend Report, proudly sponsored by Pulsara. Because the articles and advice found within contain such critical subject matter, we've elected to publish each segment one at a time here on our blog. Read, enjoy, share, and take to heart the following information brought to you by the most prestigious thought leaders in EMS. Today's entry is written by Jay Fitch, PhD, founding partner at Fitch & Associates. 

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EMS1’s state-of-the-industry survey provides targets for reducing stress, staffing challenges, and leadership shortfalls

For the past 8 years, the EMS Trend Survey has chronicled what our profession feels are key concerns. Several overarching issues that continue to impact EMS include the post-pandemic labor environment, financial factors that appear to be causing EMS to careen toward financial ruin, as well as an increase in violent interactions. These issues certainly provide a context against which we can interpret the survey results.

Labor shortages across all business sectors (including EMS) have continued since the pandemic. Retention has remained the No. 1 critical issue facing EMS for 4 straight years. In EMS, recruitment and retention efforts have been exacerbated by the inability of agencies to provide competitive compensation packages as compared to other healthcare and public safety positions. For the past 2 years, pay and benefits have been consistently identified by nearly 9 out of 10 respondents as an issue impacting retention. Interestingly, career development and advancement were rated as a higher critical factor than in past years, which is also likely impacting retention.

June & July RECAP

Team Pulsara has been busy during the summer months. Between trade shows, functionality releases, sponsored articles, and MCI Drills, here's a peek at what our teams were up to in June and July.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article originally appeared on EMS1.com. Special thanks to our guest author, John Erich, for EMS1 BrandFocus Staff.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article originally appeared on FireRescue1.com. Special thanks to our guest author, Courtney Levin, for FireRescue1 BrandFocus Staff.

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Building muscle memory eases stress during critical emergencies

According to the U.S. Census, 29.15 million people lived in Texas in 2020. Estimates for 2022 show that figure has likely surpassed the 30 million mark as the Lone Star State continues to see a huge influx of new residents. Providing emergency medical care to that many people is an extraordinarily tall task, but one the state has worked to improve upon in recent years.

The tipping point came in 2020 as COVID-19 presented the United States with unprecedented medical challenges. Residents in Texas who needed specialized hospital care due to the virus were often caught in a tangle of delays, as medical teams weren’t always working from the same playbook.

“We heard stories across the state where multiple fixed-wing aircraft showed up at the wrong airport to pick up the wrong patient,” said Joey Branton, senior vice president of strategic initiatives at Pulsara. “They were making a minimum of 30 phone calls per patient transfer.”

While the pandemic put immense pressure on first responders and the health care system, mass casualty incidents like active shooters and natural disasters didn’t stop. It quickly became clear that those in Texas needed a better way to manage patients from start to finish.

A statewide wristband system was put in place to give every patient a unique ID that could be used across organizations. But it was the coupling of that initiative with the Pulsara platform which enabled fire and EMS providers to significantly improve their level of care.

Pulsara helps streamline communication between first responders during single-patient events and mass casualty incidents. As with any skill, confidence in using this tool comes through the muscle memory built up through regular use. “First responders in Texas realized to be truly proficient at using the efficiencies provided by the Pulsara platform, they needed to use it every day,” said Branton.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article originally appeared on EMS1.com. Special thanks to our guest author, John Erich, for EMS1 BrandFocus Staff.

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It’s not as hard to get started as you might think – follow these initial steps

Few experienced paramedics need to be persuaded of the value of community paramedicine – they’ve seen the repeat 911 callers, the chronic problems and the social factors that trap people in cycles of poor health. But against so many problems so large, it’s hard to know where to begin. Who should a CP program serve? What should it try to do?

The good news is, the answers to those questions aren’t unknowable, and it’s not as hard as you might think to get a basic program up and running. Here is a guideline for departments willing to take that step toward more comprehensive care for the vulnerable in their communities.

Step #1: Assess your needs

You might have certain interventions in mind from the outset. But whatever your program does should be based on data, not impressions or anecdotes. Focus on what your population needs, not what you want.

“It really is important that you do what’s right for your community,” said veteran EMS writer and educator Hilary Gates, MAEd, NRP, director of educational strategy for Prodigy EMS and a volunteer paramedic with the Alexandria Fire Department in Virginia, whose community paramedic program she helped found in 2017. “If you start by saying, ‘I’d like to help solve the opioid crisis,’ you might find there’s actually more meth in your community than opioids.”

Identifying appropriate areas for intervention best begins with a needs assessment – an evaluation of areas where current conditions fall short of expectations. Veteran providers may already have a sense of such areas in their communities, and agency ePCR data can yield insights into call types and frequencies. Sources like NEMSIS (the National EMS Information System), CARES (the Cardiac Arrest Registry to Enhance Survival) and top EMS software companies can also provide data to get you started.

May RECAP

With 11 trade shows, May was our busiest events month to date. Our teams spoke at events (FAST23 and the Mississippi Trauma Symposium) and showed attendees how our platform can be used for daily time-sensitive emergencies and scales for hazard and stress events. See what else we were up to below.

Gain insight into how go/no-go situations are resolved by incident commanders and how you can level-up your own decision-making skills.

There are countless debates in the fire service that come down to simple go/no-go decision-making: go to the roof or not, search the fire building or not, take action at an active shooter event or not, to name a few. Go or no-go decisions become a very real situation with very real consequences.

Incident commanders, in particular, are routinely faced with making decisions that will ultimately result in either successful outcomes or compromised safety of citizens and firefighters alike. This digital eBook edition helps company and chief officers manage these moments and make smart decisions that balance firefighter safety and service to the community.

Editor's Note: This is an excerpt from a news story that was originally published on kbtx.com. Check out the full story here. 

BRYAN, Texas (KBTX) - Whenever disaster strikes, first responders are there to deal with the aftermath, which means they need to be prepared for any situation.

Last week, first responders across the region came together to strengthen their response techniques using a special platform called Pulsara.

Pulsara is a healthcare communications and logistics platform that unites teams and technologies during dynamic events.

Billy Rice, Director of EMS at St. Joseph Health Hospital, said large scale events are typically difficult to manage, but their goal is to create an actionable plan should a disaster occur.

APRIL RECAP

From the EMS Safety Summit in Denver, CO, to the Virginia Emergency Preparedness Summit in Richmond, VA, conference attendees across the U.S. got a chance to learn about the power of Pulsara and see our platform in action.  

Article Sponsorship with EMS1

We worked with EMS1 to publish the article Six EMS Response Tips for Mental and Behavioral Health Calls. The article provides EMS tips for improving provider and patient safety.

Upcoming Webinar: Leveraging Technology in Hazard Response: Advancements and Future Trends

While the announcement for this webinar was made in May, we don't want anyone to miss out! On May 17 at 11:00 am ET, emergency management and healthcare leaders will detail how they're using modern technology for patient tracking and response management around pre-planned events and major incidents. Learn more and register for the webinar here. 

With eleven trade shows, May is going to be our busiest month of 2023. Keep reading to see where you'll find Team Pulsara.

How today’s emergency management and healthcare leaders are using modern tech for patient tracking and response management around pre-planned events and major incidents

Efficient communication is critical during mass casualty incidents, hurricane evacuations, MVAs with multiple patients, or even special events. Historically, the difficulty in sharing information between various responding organizations during hazard events has made incident management challenging—not to mention when the incident extends across cities, regions, or states. New advancements in communication and patient tracking technology are transforming response capabilities, however—quickly becoming the new standard for emergency management. 

Join this exclusive roundtable discussion where Texas and Colorado emergency management and healthcare leaders will share:

• How and why they are deploying these systems locally and statewide
• The benefits and opportunities they’re seeing
• Where they see the future of emergency management communication and coordination heading 

Guest Presenters: 

• Hilary Watt, CEO/CFO/Governmental Affairs, Coastal Bend Regional Advisory Council (CBRAC) in Corpus Christi, TX.
• E. Stein Bronsky, MD, Co-Chief Medical Director, Colorado Springs Fire Department, Co-Chief Medical Director, El Paso County, CO American Medical Response (AMR), and Medical Director, El Paso-Teller County 911 Authority in the Colorado Springs, CO area.

Hosts:

• Kate Leatherby, Sales VP - West at Pulsara
• Brandon Means, VP of Medical Operations at Pulsara.

WEBINAR EVENT DETAILS

Date: Wednesday, May 17th, 2023

Time: 11 AM ET |  10 AM CT |  9 AM MT |  8 AM PT

Cost: FREE

Webinar Recording? Yes. If you can’t attend the live event or want to watch it again, all registrants will receive a link to the live recording after the event.

- CLICK HERE TO REGISTER NOW -

Patient tracking during large-scale events is a challenge. Patients may be passed between first responders, ground transport, air transport, and then transferred from one facility to another. For routine calls with individual patients, it’s feasible to track who transported the patient and where they ended up. But in mass-casualty incidents and large-scale hazards, chaotic scenes and large numbers of patients make it difficult to keep track of each patient, their information, and their ultimate destination. 

In order to solve these problems, some states are using a new approach to patient tracking: statewide wristbands with barcodes that can help track patients across organizations by functioning as a universal patient ID. 

PDC, a global manufacturer and leader in healthcare identification, is partnering with Pulsara, the leading telehealth, communication, and patient logistics platform, to offer wristbands for tracking patients within the Pulsara platform. 

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!

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article originally appeared on EMS1.com. Special thanks to our guest author, Carol Brzozowski, for EMS1 BrandFocus.

What if you could improve patient care—across your city, region, and even state—by streamlining communication and coordination between EMS and hospital teams? Texas hospital and EMS leaders are doing just that, utilizing new workflows built on a scalable telehealth communication and logistics platform. Since reworking their trauma system, they’ve improved efficiency, reduced phone calls to multiple people, streamlined transfers, optimized continuity of care, and created shared awareness and accountability.

In this leadership roundtable with Jennifer Carr, MSN, RN, CPEN, TCRN, Vice President of Trauma Services at CHRISTUS Spohn Health System in Corpus Christi, TX, Randy Endsley, BSN, CFRN, CEN, LP, CMTE, Chief Medical Officer and Flight Nurse with HALO-Flight in Corpus Christi, TX, and Corey Ricketson, Sales VP at Pulsara, discover why they created this new system of care, what day-to-day operations look like, and how they are growing it across their organization and region.

Watch the full webinar and check out part 2 of our blog coverage below! And in case you missed it, catch up on part 1 here.

And just like that, we're already a quarter of the way through 2023! From trade shows to webinars to MCI drills and so much more, we're excited to see what the rest of the year has in store for us. Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let's see what Team Pulsara was up to in March.

MARCH RECAP

We exhibited at four trade shows in March that took our teams to Texas, Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia. 

Customer Success 

A report published by a division of Australia's Department of Health, the Victorian Agency for Health Information, found that the use of Pulsara at Latrobe Regional Hospital in Traralgon, Victoria resulted in an 80% reduction in the time it took for patients to receive a CT scan and a 44% reduction in time-to-first medical review for thrombolysed stroke patients. 

Pulsara + Incident & Event Management

Pulsara's Vice President - Medical Ops, Brandon Means, joined the NAEMSP Florida Chapter podcast to discuss how Pulsara's Incident & Event Management functionality can help teams triage, track patients, reunify, and load balance resources during hazards and stress events.  

April is going to be a busy trade show month for our teams! Keep reading to see where you'll find Team Pulsara.

What if you could improve patient care—across your city, region, and even state—by streamlining communication and coordination between EMS and hospital teams? Texas hospital and EMS leaders are doing just that, utilizing new workflows built on a scalable telehealth communication and logistics platform. Since reworking their trauma system, they’ve improved efficiency, cut down on phone calls to multiple people, streamlined transfers, optimized continuity of care, and created shared awareness and accountability.

In this leadership roundtable with Jennifer Carr, MSN, RN, CPEN, TCRN, Vice President of Trauma Services at CHRISTUS Spohn Health System in Corpus Christi, TX, Randy Endsley, BSN, CFRN, CEN, LP, CMTE, Chief Medical Officer and Flight Nurse with HALO-Flight in Corpus Christi, TX, and Corey Ricketson, Sales VP at Pulsara, discover why they created this new system of care, what day-to-day operations look like, and how they are growing it across their organization and region.

Watch the full webinar and check out part 1 of our blog coverage below!

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article originally appeared on firechief.com. Special thanks to our guest author, John Erich, for FireRescue1 BrandFocus Staff.

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Triage at major events can be slow, and tracking patients can be difficult – Pulsara’s new functionality is aimed at improving both experiences

As it prepared for takeoff, the 737 couldn’t avoid the speeding rental truck that came crashing toward it through the fence beyond the airport tarmac. The resulting collision killed 14 of its passengers and crew, as well as the driver of the truck, and left 56 more injured.

First responders from multiple agencies rushed to the scene that morning last October at Preston Smith International Airport in Lubbock, Texas, to respond to the full-scale mass-casualty exercise. Medical personnel triaged the wounded and gave them special armbands the state now uses for patients experiencing time-sensitive emergencies, including victims of mass-casualty incidents. The bands contained individual barcodes that, with a quick scan, would take any responder at the scene to a dedicated care channel for that patient, where the provider could then enter the patient’s identifying and treatment information.

The testing of that technology – new functionality from Pulsara designed to help responders triage and track patients in major incidents – was one of the goals of the exercise, which simulated the kind of MCI that often overwhelms unprepared systems.

“We were looking for ways to improve patient tracking and incident awareness for all command staff on scene,” said Logistics Chief and Emergency Preparedness Specialist Brent Fox, NREMT-P, of University Medical Center EMS in Lubbock. “Pulsara allowed everyone on scene to have full visibility from any location once they joined the incident.”

That quick, easy shared awareness – with everyone who’s part of the response having access to the same information – is among several important benefits of the new tool responders to the Lubbock exercise got to experience firsthand.

Editor's Note: This post is adapted from a report first published by the Victorian Agency for Health Information, a division of Australia's Department of Health. Check out the original version here. 

A recent report published by a division of Australia's Department of Health, the Victorian Agency for Health Information, confirmed the benefit of using communication and logistics technology for patient care at Latrobe Regional Hospital in Traralgon, Victoria. New data from the Australian Stroke Clinical Registry showed as much as an 80% reduction in time-to-treatment for critical stroke patients.

Latrobe Regional Hospital is a busy regional health service in the eastern Victorian town of Traralgon, with 328 beds and 2,465 staff servicing a catchment of more than 270,000 people. The emergency department alone sees 42,000 people each year.

At the recent National Stroke Quality Improvement Workshop, Latrobe Regional Hospital shared how they used registry data to evaluate newly implemented technology designed to streamline day-to-day operations and facilitate better treatment times. The Australian Stroke Clinical Registry data played a key role in evaluating the use of Pulsara at Latrobe Regional Hospital, responding to staff questions about how the health service would measure the performance and impact of the new technology.

FEBRUARY RECAP

Everything is bigger in Texas, including Pulsara's presence. We exhibited at two trade shows in Texas in February—ISC and the Alamo Interprofessional Emergency Medicine Symposium—and presented a webinar on 'Leveraging Networked Communication to Build a System of Care that Scales,' with Corey Ricketson, Pulsara Sales Vice President - Texas, and Eric Epley, Executive Director of the Southwest Texas Regional Advisory Council (STRAC). Be on the lookout for our coverage of the webinar. 

We also released our latest customer success story and case study out of Arkansas. National Park Medical Center teams achieved a consistent <60-minute average door-to-balloon time for STEMI and an 80% decrease in average door-to-CT time for stroke. 

Check out the trade shows Team Pulsara will be exhibiting at in March!

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.

How Embracing Modern Technology Paves the Way for the Future of EMS Communications 

We’ve seen firsthand the shortcomings of our current infrastructure systems and how they’ve broken down when we desperately needed them to work for us. We continue to rely heavily on two-way radios, phone calls, and emails which can be inefficient and prevent shared awareness. What if we told you there’s a newer — even more efficient — way to communicate, using ONE tool to connect team members whether in daily operations or major stress events? And, what if this tool could even step in at an infrastructural level for regions or states to be able to standardize how EMS organizations can coordinate with public health, safety, and emergency management to communicate and track individual patients?

Healthcare is at a turning point. We either join other industries with modern communication or rely on old methods that have not evolved to meet today's challenges.

In this interview presented by the National Association of State EMS Officials (NASEMSO), Corey Ricketson, Pulsara Sales Vice President - Texas, and Eric Epley, Executive Director of the Southwest Texas Regional Advisory Council (STRAC), will identify what it takes to build a true system of care that scales. Learn how modern and scalable technologies are necessary to maintain this infrastructure system into the future, the use of statewide wristbands for every patient type to improve patient handoffs and tracking, the benefits of using the same communication platform for everyday patient transports, transfers, and transitions of care and stress events, and how platforms like Pulsara can power a community paramedicine program.

- CLICK HERE TO REGISTER NOW -

WEBINAR EVENT DETAILS

Date: Wednesday, February 15, 2023

Time: 4:00 PM ET | 3:00 PM CT | 2:00 PM MT | 1:00 PM PT

Host: NASEMSO

Cost: FREE

January Recap

January was on the quiet side for our teams. We exhibited at two trade shows—the NAEMSP Annual Meeting in Tampa, FL, and the Arrowhead EMS Conference in Duluth, MN—and made an exciting announcement for UK hospital and ambulance organizations: they can now procure Pulsara via the Crown Commercial Service on the updated G-Cloud 13 framework. 

We've got a busy month ahead of us in February. Check out what trade shows we'll be exhibiting at this month, and visit the corresponding landing page to set up a meeting with the team while they're in town!

Pulsara's Chief Growth Officer, Kris Kaull, recently had the opportunity to sit down with Rob Lawrence on the EMS One-Stop podcast. In this episode, Rob talks with Kris about history taking and how to improve communication and gather better intel. Kris shares his top 10 hacks to improve your history taking, including thinking like a detective, thinking outside the box, understanding medical medicine, being a good listener, and more.

This podcast originally aired on EMS One-Stop on November 17, 2022. Check out part 1 of our blog coverage here, and then listen to the podcast and check out the full transcript of part 2 below.

Pulsara's Chief Growth Officer, Kris Kaull, recently had the opportunity to sit down with Rob Lawrence on the EMS One-Stop podcast. In this episode, Rob talks with Kris about history taking and how to improve communication and gather better intel. Kris shares his top 10 hacks to improve your history taking, including thinking like a detective, thinking outside the box, understanding medical medicine, being a good listener, and more.

This podcast originally aired on EMS One-Stop on November 17, 2022. Listen to the podcast and check out the full transcript below. 

UK hospital and ambulance organisations can now procure Pulsara via the Crown Commercial Service updated G-Cloud framework.

Bozeman, Montana, USA, January 17, 2023 — Pulsara, the leading mobile telehealth, communication, and logistics platform that unites healthcare teams and technologies across organisations during dynamic events, has been listed as an approved cloud software supplier by Crown Commercial Service on the updated G-Cloud 13 framework. Because Pulsara is now available through this framework—under Lot 2, Cloud Software (SaaS), and the service categories of Healthcare and Information Communications and Technology (ICT)—organisations in the UK are specifically enabled to procure the Pulsara UNITED solution for hospitals and ambulance services. 

“The ability for healthcare organisations to access new and evolving technologies for efficient patient care is of utmost importance,” said Cynthia Bradford Lencioni, Pulsara’s EVP - Global Business & Chief Operating Officer. “We are thrilled to join the updated G-Cloud 13 framework, providing streamlined access to customers in the United Kingdom looking for digital health transformation solutions.”

EDITOR'S NOTE: This podcast originally aired on Becker's Hospital Review on December 8th, 2022. You can find the original post here. 

When a health system is looking for ways to improve patient care, there are a lot of factors to consider. How will new solutions affect existing workflows, and how will they reduce time-to-treatment for patients? 

In this Becker's Healthcare podcast episode, host Marcus Robertson sits down with Kate Leatherby, Sales VP - West, at Pulsara to discuss what challenges health systems are looking to overcome with Pulsara, how the platform overlays a health system's current workflow, what innovative ways seasoned customers are leveraging the platform to improve patient care, decreasing time to treatment, and more. 

Check out the podcast and read the full transcript of the interview below.

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. 

November & December Recap

Is it just us, or does time seem to move faster the closer we get to the new year? We haven't let all of the delicious holiday foods slow us down or put us into hibernation mode. Throughout November and December, we exhibited at six trade shows across the United States, with Pulsara's Senior Vice President - Strategic Initiatives, Joey Branton, presenting a session during IAEM's Annual Conference & EMEX. 

Pulsara's CS Specialist - U.S. West, Cara McCoy, moderated the webinar 'Overhauling a Trauma System of Care.' Hosted by the American Trauma Society, the webinar focused on improving patient care by streamlining communication and coordination between EMS and hospital teams.

The integration brings data captured in Pulsara's communication platform into EPR's MedicWorks ePCR, improving team communication and reducing time on task.

BOZEMAN, Mont., December 20, 2022 — EPR Systems, Inc. and Pulsara join together to streamline patient care data exchange, bringing critical information to first responders on scene. Pulsara’s communication and logistics platformenables EMS and hospital staff to instantly communicate event-based patient information, including one-tap team notifications, image sharing, audio/video calls, and ETA alerts, all on a single app. EPR Systems MedicWorks electronic Patient Care Reporting (ePCR) platform provides first responders the interface to capture and record HIPAA-compliant patient data customized to their organization’s requirements.

“EPR Systems is a customer-focused company, and when one of our Texas customers asked for a Pulsara integration with EPR’s MedicWorks ePCR, we jumped at the opportunity to integrate with Pulsara, who was extremely helpful and welcomed our two systems working together,” says Jeff Jacobson, EPR’s Director of Business Development and 22-year firefighter paramedic. “Connecting these two platforms puts the power in the hands of the responder and healthcare team to deliver urgent care based on accurate data sharing. The integration eliminates dual data entry, which decreases data entry errors and creates a single point of communication—it creates the ‘data hygiene’ responders and healthcare teams need to do their job efficiently and deliver the immediate care patients need.”

Documentation Time Cut by 66% Compared with ePCR Used Before the MEDIVIEW and Pulsara Integration.

BOZEMAN, Mont., December 14, 2022 – Pulsara, the leading mobile telehealth and communication platform that connects healthcare teams across organizations, is pleased to announce a pair of technical integration and collaborative deployments with Beyond Lucid Technologies: first, at the Ute Pass Regional Health Service District (UPRHSD), then at the Delta County Ambulance District (DCAD), both in Colorado. 

Editor's Note: At Pulsara, it's our honor to highlight the stories of our customers and the work they do on behalf of their patients. On November 20th, the UCHealth Memorial Hospital Central team responded courageously to a mass shooting in Colorado Springs. The following article is an excerpt from their story, which was written by Erin Emery, Content Director at UCHealth, and Katie Kerwin McCrimmon, Writer and Communications Specialist at UCHealth. It was originally published on November 27th, 2022, on uchealth.org. Read the full story here. 

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The calls crackled over the police officer’s radio in the hospital ER: “Club Q … Active shooter …”

It was a little after midnight. Saturday night had been unusually quiet in the ER. But the early hours of Sunday, Nov. 20, were about to test medical pros who train to handle the worst possible emergencies.

Patients in dire need of their help were minutes away.

The police officer had been in the emergency department at UCHealth Memorial Hospital Central in Colorado Springs assisting with a suspected drunk driver when he heard the call about a horrific mass shooting. He immediately gave a heads up to the charge nurse.

She jumped into action, notifying her team throughout the emergency department (or ED as medical folks call it) along with other key people throughout the hospital.

“One of the police officers just told us that there was a shooting and we’re expecting anywhere from 15 to 20 people. We’re hoping it’s wrong, but if not, it’s all hands on deck,” the charge nurse told Kayla Ireland, who was working that night as Memorial Hospital’s nursing house supervisor.

“OK. I’m headed down there,” said Ireland, who had been working upstairs in the hospital.

Until news of the shooting hit, the emergency staff and providers mostly had been helping people who were sick with the flu, RSV and COVID-19. But Memorial is a Level I Trauma Center, the highest level possible. That means that highly trained teams must be ready 24/7 for emergencies of all sorts — including a mass shooting.

The hospital is just 12 minutes and a little over five miles away from Club Q, which had always been a refuge for LGBTQ people. Now club goers who had been enjoying a fun Saturday night were fighting for their lives.

New feature assists with triage and tracking of patients during a crisis

Bozeman, Mont., November 29, 2022 — Pulsara, the leading telehealth, communication, and logistics platform that unites teams and technologies across organizations during dynamic events, announced today the official release of new functionality designed for incident management. The new platform capabilities are designed to help triage and track patients during mass casualty incidents (MCIs), multiple patient incidents (MPIs), floods, evacuations, and other disasters, as well as major planned events (e.g., concerts, sporting events, etc.). The platform provides responders with a clear line of communication around every patient on a familiar platform they use every day for patient care. When a stress event occurs, no additional preparation or training is required; everyone can continue using the same platform to respond confidently and efficiently in a crisis.

The first major test of the new functionality occurred in October in Lubbock, Texas, as the FAA conducted a full-scale crisis exercise at Lubbock Preston Smith International Airport. First responders from multiple agencies assembled to respond to a drill scenario that involved a rental truck crashing through tarmac fencing and colliding with a plane that was preparing to take off, injuring 56 passengers. During the simulation, first responders and city agencies used Pulsara's Incident Management functionality to enter patient information, communicate, and coordinate care. 

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. 

OCTOBER Recap

October flew by in the blink of an eye. Our team was busy prepping for November opportunities, including a webinar hosted by the American Trauma Society, and exhibiting at six trade shows across the United States. 

The key is to remember that kids get sick differently than adults and that physical findings may be more subtle

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article originally appeared on EMS1.com. Special thanks to our guest author, Jonathan Lee, for EMS1 BrandFocus.

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I have been fortunate during my career to be able to specialize in pediatrics, which has given me a unique perspective. It is pretty common to hear paramedics say that kids are difficult, but the truth is, kids are just different. When it comes to trauma, the basics are all the same: ABCs, bleeding control, and rapid transport. There are a few things that I do differently with children than when managing adults, and I am certain these can make things better for both you and your patient.

Upgrading a Trauma System of Care: How We Improved Efficiency, Created Shared Awareness, & Optimized Continuity of Care

What if you could improve patient care—across your city, region, and even state—by streamlining communication and coordination between EMS and hospital teams? Learn how Texas hospital and EMS leaders are doing just that—utilizing new workflows built on a scalable telehealth communication and logistics platform. Since reworking their trauma system, they’ve improved efficiency, cut down on phone calls to multiple people, streamlined transfers, optimized continuity of care, created shared awareness and accountability, and more. In this leadership roundtable, discover why they created this new system of care, what day-to-day operations look like, and how they are growing it across their organization and region.

Presented by Jennifer Carr, MSN, RN, CPEN, TCRN, Vice President of Trauma Services at CHRISTUS Spohn Health System in Corpus Christi, TX, Randy Endsley, BSN, CFRN, CEN, LP, CMTE, Chief Medical Officer and Flight Nurse with HALO-Flight in Corpus Christi, TX, and moderator Corey Ricketson, Vice President - Strategic Accounts at Pulsara.

UPDATE: Watch the full webinar here!

Webinar Event Details

Date: Wednesday, November 2nd, 2022

Time: 1:00 PM ET | 12:00 PM CT | 11:00 AM MT | 10:00 AM PT

Host: American Trauma Society

Cost: FREE

Editor's Note: On August 1st, 2022, EMS1, Fitch & Associates, and the National EMS Management Association released their fifth annual EMS Trend Report, proudly sponsored by Pulsara. Because the articles and advice found within contain such critical subject matter, we've elected to publish each segment one at a time here on our blog. Read, enjoy, share, and take to heart the following information brought to you by the most prestigious thought leaders in EMS. Today's entry is written by Pulsara's very own Chief Growth Officer, Kris Kaull, NRP, CCEMT-P, FP-C, and Sara Kaull, M.Ed, Executive Director of SIM-MT.

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Challenge yourself to make room for the great in your career and life by abandoning toxic behavior

My wife, Sara, is a reforming perfectionist. For much of her life, she was obsessed with control, and presenting a “perfect” version of herself to the world. Starting with gold stars in kindergarten and accolades in her professional life, Sara added more and more to her calendar, executing every commitment to perfection until life took an unexpected turn when her father was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, and she could no longer control what was happening around her.

As helpers and caregivers, how many of us can relate to carrying too much? It’s in our DNA. We pride ourselves on busyness and selflessness. As clinicians, we’ve taken care of others to our own detriment. We say yes to protect ourselves from the judgment of others. We say yes because we feel guilty if we don’t.

But what if saying yes stops us from becoming the best we can be?

Weslaco EMS and Knapp Medical Center in Weslaco, Texas have adopted Pulsara to facilitate better communication between paramedics in the field and hospital staff, helping doctors more effectively treat patients after they arrive in the emergency room. Clinicians are using the Pulsara platform to share detailed information about a patient's condition.

September Recap

September was a busy month for our teams. We attended seven trade shows across the United States and Europe, released a new version of our platform, and moderated a fantastic and educational webinar! 

Editor's Note: On August 1st, 2022, EMS1, Fitch & Associates, and the National EMS Management Association released their fifth annual EMS Trend Report, proudly sponsored by Pulsara. Because the articles and advice found within contain such critical subject matter, we've elected to publish each segment one at a time here on our blog. Read, enjoy, share, and take to heart the following information brought to you by the most prestigious thought leaders in EMS. Today's entry is written by Kerri Hatt, Editor-in-Chief of EMS1.

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Proven recruitment and retention strategies: Readers sound off on what’s attracting new talent and keeping members satisfied

Our goal with the EMS Trend Survey and Report is not just to identify areas of change, growth, and stagnation, but to also source solutions to shared challenges. Nearly all (97%) of the 3,000- plus respondents to the 2022 EMS Trend Survey reported some level of difficulty with recruitment and retention. We asked readers to share their innovative ideas to improve recruitment and retention, and any creative practices that are proving successful to improve staffing. We received thousands of comments, from those in services with above-average compensation and a track record of adequate staffing, to those whose organizations had recently implemented a change and were fully staffed for the first time in years.

Editor's Update: The ET3 program is mentioned in the below report. Please note that, 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. Be advised that Mobile Integrated Healthcare and Community Paramedicine are separate initiatives and are unaffected by the ET3 program termination.

Editor's Note: On August 1st, 2022, EMS1, Fitch & Associates, and the National EMS Management Association released their fifth annual EMS Trend Report, proudly sponsored by Pulsara. Because the articles and advice found within contain such critical subject matter, we've elected to publish each segment one at a time here on our blog. Read, enjoy, share, and take to heart the following information brought to you by the most prestigious thought leaders in EMS. Today's entry is written by Jay Fitch, PhD, founding partner at Fitch & Associates. 

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Will EMS Matter in The Future of Healthcare?

History teaches that if a profession doesn’t innovate, it loses relevancy.

In the 1950s and ’60s, railroads were the primary way people, goods, and services moved throughout America. Resistance to change and outdated work rules (e.g., requiring multiple conductors, even on freight trains without passengers) led to alternative transportation approaches and the expansion of air travel and freight. What outdated paradigms are limiting the future of EMS?

All ALS first response and third-party insurers requiring hospital transport for payment top the list.

How Fire and EMS Leaders are Turning Telehealth into a Force Multiplier for Improved Response & Patient Care

What if you could turn your fire and EMS crews into force multipliers, empowering them to help reduce healthcare disparities, improve support around behavioral crisis patients, and even bring back and modernize the traditional “house call”? And what if by doing so you could free up much-needed EMS and hospital resources, help make fire and EMS a more integral part of the patient care continuum within their community, and help patients get the care they need faster, more affordably, and more efficiently?

Learn how Colorado EMS leaders set up a regional system of care to do just that—built around Pulsara, a secure, mobile-first telehealth, communication, and logistics platform. Hear tangible takeaways and cutting-edge insights that you can apply to your own organization, including why and how they set up this system in the first place; how the program is financially sustained; what kind of data-driven results and benefits they’ve seen for patients and providers; and discussion on the new 988 mental health hotline and how it can integrate into this cutting-edge system of care.

Webinar Event Details

Date: Tuesday, September 20, 2022

Time: 1:00 PM ET | 12:00 PM CT | 11:00 AM MT | 10:00 AM PT

Host: Fire Engineering

Cost: FREE

Australian-based healthcare real-world feasibility study finds improved communication and faster patient care timelines when using Pulsara.

Bozeman, Mont., September 1, 2022 — Pulsara, the leading mobile telehealth, communication, and logistics platform that unites healthcare teams and technologies across organizations during dynamic events, announced the publication of the British Medical Journal real-world feasibility study analyzing the effects of Pulsara on care team communication and acute stroke and STEMI patient treatment times. Titled “Real-world, feasibility study to investigate the use of a multidisciplinary app (Pulsara) to improve prehospital communication and timelines for acute stroke/STEMI care,” the study was conducted in Victoria, Australia with pre-hospital and within-hospital clinical teams. As a first-of-its-kind systematic analysis of Pulsara’s efficacy across the whole patient journey for treatment of stroke and STEMI, the study found that utilization of the platform resulted in significant patient treatment time improvements. 

“Implementation of the Pulsara digital communication application resulted in faster metrics of the patient arriving at hospital and being at triage when Pulsara was used, as well as patient off ambulance stretcher times for both stroke and STEMI cases,” reported study authors Chris F. Bladin et al. “Hospital metrics for stroke cases also improved significantly with door-to-first medical review and door-to-CT completed more rapidly.” 

August Recap

August flew by in the blink of an eye. While our teams only attended three trade shows, the end of the trade show season is going to prove to be busier than ever. Before we get to that, let's look at what we were up to in August. 

Editor's Note: On August 1st, 2022, EMS1, Fitch & Associates, and the National EMS Management Association released their fifth annual EMS Trend Report, proudly sponsored by Pulsara. Because the articles and advice found within contain such critical subject matter, we've elected to publish each segment one at a time here on our blog. Read, enjoy, share, and take to heart the following information brought to you by the most prestigious thought leaders in EMS. Today's entry is written by Kerri Hatt, Editor-in-Chief of EMS1.

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EMS leaders respond to the 2022 EMS Trend Survey results with concrete steps to improve recruitment, retention, wellness, and safety

The EMS Trend Survey identifies where growth is needed to impact the sustainability and future of the industry. But growth requires a commitment to action.

We’ve asked a group of EMS veterans and up-and-coming leaders to identify areas where change is needed, as indicated by EMS Trend Survey results, and to offer action items for EMS supervisors, managers and chiefs.

By examining your service’s leadership strategies, and taking the steps outlined below, you’re on your way to elevating the safety, engagement and career health of your providers.

Editor's Update: The ET3 program is mentioned in the report below. Please note that, 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. Be advised that Mobile Integrated Healthcare and Community Paramedicine are separate initiatives and are unaffected by the ET3 program termination.

Editor's Note: On August 1st, 2022, EMS1, Fitch & Associates, and the National EMS Management Association released their fifth annual EMS Trend Report, proudly sponsored by Pulsara. Because the articles and advice found within contain such critical subject matter, we've elected to publish each segment one at a time here on our blog. Read, enjoy, share, and take to heart the following information brought to you by the most prestigious thought leaders in EMS. Today's entry is written by Anthony W. Minge, EdD, senior partner at Fitch & Associates.

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Translating data into information, and information into action

Survey questions for the EMS Trend Survey were developed through a collaboration between EMS1, Fitch & Associates and the EMS Survey Team – which was instrumental in collection and interpretation of data. The EMS Trend Survey was conducted online in early 2022. The survey was widely promoted and open to any member of the EMS community. More than 3,200 people responded, the most in the survey’s history. They represent a wide range of service models, certification levels and years of experience, and every region of the nation.

The 2022 EMS Trend Survey results reinforce what many of us see every day. More than two years into the pandemic, it’s still impacting every aspect of our profession – from recruitment and retention, to safety, to how you assess and treat patients.

As we have realized that this pandemic is not just a flash in the pan, but something we may be dealing with for a long time, we have also been able to move forward. Many innovations that departments initially put on hold because of COVID-19 have now been implemented. In other cases, changes wrought by this global health emergency now have uses well beyond COVID patients and may be with us, helping patients and the people who care for them, for years to come.

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.”

June & July Recap

Over the past two months, our team has attended four conferences worldwide and presented virtual and in-person sessions with topics focusing on addressing urban and rural healthcare access through broadband connectivity and the role of stupidity in EMS. 

What else has Team Pulsara been up to for the past two months? Let's take a look!

New functionalities enable healthcare teams to configure their ideal workflows for specific patient case types. 

Bozeman, Mont., August 4, 2022 — Pulsara, the leading mobile telehealth, communication, and logistics platform that unites healthcare teams and technologies across organizations during dynamic events, recently released six new patient types that connect distributed teams on a single flexible and scalable platform. From prehospital care to the many in-hospital teams and specialists, the new functionalities unite care teams around each unique patient case, enabling reduced treatment times, improved team collaboration, and streamlined transfers. 

"Pulsara's platform allows flexible interactions in and across any organization, enabling access to the people you need, right when you need them,” said Kate Leatherby, Regional Vice President (U.S. West) at Pulsara. “This capability is truly invaluable for all care teams. For any patient type, care team communication and collaboration are improved—and patient care is invariably improved in the process.”

Pulsara recently released six new patient types—behavioral health, obstetrics, and toxicology/overdose, which were previously reported on, as well as surgical emergency, pulmonary embolism, and shock/ECMO. These new functionalities expand the power of the platform and improve support and care coordination for additional types of patients. Each of these patient types allows clinicians to match their patients with the appropriate care teams and specialized resources through flexible and scalable interactions as the patient case evolves. Clinicians can leverage Pulsara’s telehealth video calling and photo sharing functionality to consult with other clinicians, determine the most appropriate disposition, and guarantee follow-up in the process.

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.

The radio has long been the lifeline for first responders, but new technologies and functions require fire and EMS organizations to think more broadly about how they communicate in the field

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article originally appeared on FireRescue1.com. Special thanks to our guest author, Robert Avsec, for FireRescue1 BrandFocus.

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For an industry long dependent upon land mobile radios (e.g., mobile units in ambulances and handheld units), there have been many hardware advancements and additions since the days of firefighter/paramedics Johnny Gage and Roy DeSoto responding to emergencies and communicating with Rampart General via the telemetry radio in the “orange box.” Putting mobile computer terminals in ambulances was one of those developments, followed by notebook computers and tablets, and more recently, smartphones.

While significant advancements have been made in the communications hardware used by fire and EMS providers, effective and efficient communication is still an issue for responders for a variety of reasons. Many issues can adversely affect communication in the field, especially when it comes to patient care information.

Here, we consider 10 of the most common communication challenges and what fire and EMS leaders can do to address them:

While it’s essential that EMS providers stay on top of core clinical skills for the most critical calls, such as sudden cardiac arrest and airway management, it’s also important to keep up with the skills to address issues you may not see as often. From treating burns to managing pain in pediatric patients to responding to mental health calls, new information on best practices can help you hone your practice. 

In partnership with EMS1, Pulsara is releasing a free eBook collection of popular "10 Things You Need to Know" articles, with recent input from EMS professionals on subjects that can help improve clinical practice and save money for EMS organizations. 

GET THE GUIDE - Closing the Gaps: Plug Holes in Your Skillset and Cracks in Your Budget

Editor's Note: This article was first posted on Becker's Hospital Review. Check out the original version here. 

The past two years have seen fast-paced innovation transform many parts of healthcare systems around the world. While some progress has been made around the interoperability of data systems, many care teams continue to use antiquated technologies to convey crucial patient information to one another, including linear communication tools like pagers, radios, and fax machines. Not only are these tools not connected, but if the chain breaks once, we've negatively affected a patient's outcome—either with a significant delay or in some cases, mistakes that generate more patient harm.

During a featured session at Becker's Hospital Review's Shift to Digital Virtual Event sponsored by Pulsara, Joey Branton, Senior Vice President of Strategic Initiatives at Pulsara, discussed why bringing broadband connectivity to patient-related communication is crucial to the future of healthcare innovation.

Watch the 30-minute replay below, or read on for the session's four essential takeaways. 

2023 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 unaffected by the ET3 program termination.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article originally appeared on EMS1.com. Special thanks to our guest author, Cole Zercoe, for EMS1 BrandFocus.

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Here’s how your agency can use telehealth and community paramedicine to deliver more personalized care to patients

Community paramedicine, mobile integrated healthcare and ET3 are rapidly becoming hot topics in EMS as the profession evolves, especially as the long tail of the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbates issues like ambulance turnaround times.

As ambulance agencies worldwide struggle with long waits at the ED, it’s become even more vital to find solutions to issues like ED overcrowding and long wall times. Community paramedicine, MIH and ET3 possess the unique ability to reduce transports while simultaneously improving care for patients.

Here’s a look at 10 ways EMS agencies can use telehealth and community paramedicine to deliver high-quality care to patients, some of the advantages of implementing such strategies, and how the ET3 model supports this approach.

Pulsara MED OPS™ earns prestigious industry recognition for its impact on healthcare communication during incidents like MCIs, large-scale emergencies, and disasters. 

BOZEMAN, Mont., June 14, 2022 - Pulsara, the leading mobile telehealth and communication platform that connects healthcare teams across organizations, announced today that Pulsara MED OPS™ has been named the “Best Healthcare Technology Solution” winner of 2022 as part of the annual SIIA CODiE Awards. The CODiE Awards recognize the companies producing the most innovative business technology products across the country, and around the world.

Acknowledged as the premier awards program for the software and information industries for over 35 years, the SIIA CODiE Awards are produced by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), the principal trade association for the software, education, media, and digital content industries. SIIA announced the full slate of CODiE winners during an online winner announcement on June 8. Pulsara MED OPS™ was honored as one of 46 winners across the 45 business technology categories, including seven leadership categories recognizing outstanding companies, individuals, and teams.

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 is pleased to announce the release of Pulsara HQ, a new browser-based command center that enables supervisors to track units, access patient details, see hospital availability, and communicate with your team.

May Recap

May was the busiest trade show month for Team Pulsara, with our teams attending a whopping 11 shows across the globe. And events weren't the only things keeping the team busy in May! See our highlights from last month below.

New functionality enables healthcare teams to better support pregnant mothers and newborns via telehealth and improved communication. 

Bozeman, Mont., May 25, 2022 — Pulsara, the leading mobile telehealth, communication, and logistics platform that unites healthcare teams and technologies across organizations during dynamic events, recently released a dedicated obstetrics patient type that connects distributed teams on a single flexible and scalable platform—from EMS and standard obstetrics teams to NICU or trauma teams in more critical cases. The new functionality unites care teams around each OB patient case, improving the lives of both patients and caregivers by enabling reduced treatment times, improved team collaboration, and streamlined transfers. 

Pulsara MED OPS™ earns nod from industry leaders for its impact on healthcare communication during MCIs, large-scale emergencies, and disasters. 

BOZEMAN, Mont., May 23, 2022 - Pulsara, the leading mobile telehealth and communication platform that connects healthcare teams across organizations, announced today that Pulsara MED OPS™ was named a 2022 SIIA CODiE Award finalist in the “Best Healthcare Technology Solution” category. CODiE finalists represent the best products, technologies, and services in software, information, and business technology. 

The SIIA CODiE Awards, the long-running, premier awards program for the software and information industries, are produced by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), the principal trade association for the software, education, media, and digital content industries.  Pulsara MED OPS™ was picked as one of 137 finalists across 43 business categories in a talent-packed field of nominees.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article originally appeared on FireRescue1.com. Special thanks to our guest author, Linda F. Willing, for FireRescue1 BrandFocus.

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It’s a stressful job, so you need to know how to check in and take care of yourself

Firefighting is a stressful occupation. Working in unpredictable and hazardous environments takes a physical toll. Difficult calls, variable duty schedules, working in close proximity with others who may or may not be personally compatible – all of these things contribute to stress that, if not well managed, can lead to significant issues for both physical and mental health.

In recent years, fire departments have done much better in emphasizing physical health and safety, through such things as improved protocols for use and care of PPE, the mandatory use of seatbelts and requirements for rehab during prolonged incidents. Many fire departments now have regular health screenings for all members and maintain records on long-term health risks like job-related cancers.

How Healthcare Leaders are Successfully Connecting Teams & Organizations Across Regions for Better Outcomes

Increasingly, more healthcare organizations are discovering the need for an interconnected system of care that includes local and regional healthcare systems—from EMS to hospital teams and beyond. The benefits to patient care and clinical coordination are profound, from faster treatment times and reduced costs to streamlined transfers and unified MCI/MPI and disaster management.

But with so many different systems and stakeholders, how does one go about setting up a regional system of care that scales? How do you engage and get buy-in from a diverse group of stakeholders?

In this upcoming webinar, learn firsthand how healthcare leaders from Colorado Springs, CO, and Des Moines, IA, successfully created interconnected regional systems of care based around Pulsara: a secure, mobile-first telehealth, communication, and logistics platform.

Hear how they successfully brought stakeholders from multiple organizations together, what challenges they faced and how they overcame them, tips and best practices, change management insights and discoveries, and more. 

WEBINAR EVENT DETAILS

Date: Tuesday, May 17th, 2022 

Time: 12:00 PM ET | 11:00 AM CT | 10:00 AM MT | 9:00 AM PT

Cost: FREE

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 .

April Recap

The fourth month of the year proved to be an exciting month for Team Pulsara. While we only attended three conferences in person—and sponsored two virtual conferences—our teams were hard at work expanding the Pulsara platform to include new patient types that will enable your teams to scale as each patient case evolves. 

Custom patient IDs and wristband scanning will enable seamless response across organizations during stress events.

Bozeman, Mont., April 27, 2022 — Pulsara, the leading mobile telehealth, communication, and logistics platform that unites healthcare teams and technologies across organizations during dynamic events, announced today that they are releasing new incident management functionality that will help quickly scale emergency response during mass casualty incidents (MCIs), multiple patient incidents (MPIs), floods, evacuations, and disasters. 

The product’s new incident management capabilities will allow first responders and EMS providers to quickly create or join an existing patient channel by scanning custom armbands (such as public safety-issued bands or traditional triage tags used during a crisis), add patient condition (red, yellow, green, and black) within the app, and give incident command the ability to monitor the number, status, and severity of patients through a patient dashboard.

When responding to mass casualty and multiple patient incidents, emergency responders often use wristbands and/or triage tags to triage patients and visibly denote their condition. Pulsara’s new incident management functionality will allow first responders to scan these wristbands/triage tags and instantly start a new patient channel in Pulsara. Responders — from any organization — who subsequently treat the patient will be able to simply scan the wristband and will instantly be added to the patient’s channel. They will then be able to see all information that has previously been added to the case, including any known demographic information, vitals, any treatments provided, and all communications around the patient. Emergency responders will also be able to add, track, and modify the patient’s triage status in Pulsara, with the appropriate green, yellow, red, and black statuses that match traditional triage tags. 

The newly expanded platform allows healthcare teams to support toxicology and overdose patients via telehealth and improved communication. 

Bozeman, Mont., April 20, 2022 — Pulsara, the leading mobile telehealth, communication, and logistics platform that unites healthcare teams and technologies across organizations during dynamic events, recently released a dedicated toxicology and overdose patient type that easily connects everyone required for each patient case—from EMS and hospital teams to the poison center and even behavioral health. 

With this new dedicated functionality, everyone along the patient care continuum can collaborate securely and instantly, avoiding multiple reports and phone calls. Teams can leverage instant messages, live group video and audio calling, images, audio clips, flowchart notes, and template-driven recommendations, all without a single landline phone call. Pulsara puts consultants, toxicologists, and poison centers on the frontlines through the platform’s instant visual communications to identify a venomous snake or mystery pills, assess a strange rash, or even interpret an ECG.

Pulsara even enables first responders to treat in place when appropriate, equipping EMS with direct communication with hospital clinicians, toxicology or overdose specialists, or even behavioral health experts. Such unified communication helps facilitate unnecessary ED visits and saves time and resources for the care system while providing a better experience for the patient. 

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." 

How one Arkansas hospital is using healthcare communication technology to dramatically speed up time-to-treatment for STEMI patients

BOZEMAN, Mont., April 4, 2022 — Pulsara, the leading mobile telehealth, communication, and logistics platform that unites healthcare teams and technologies across organizations during dynamic events, published new details on Arkansas-based Ouachita County Medical Center’s record improvements in patient care. The Ouachita County Medical Center Case Study reveals the challenges many hospitals face when trying to transfer patients quickly, and the solution they found that enabled faster transfers and streamlined communication across organizations, ensuring secure and efficient patient care.

As a small medical center in rural southern Arkansas, Ouachita County Medical Center (OCMC) faced a lengthy and inefficient process when transferring STEMI patients to percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) facilities that could provide critical care. Jennifer Ray, RN, OCMC’s ER and ICU manager, explained that in 2017, the average door-in, door-out (DIDO) time was 72 minutes for the 19 STEMI patients who came into the OCMC ER—more than double what the American College of Cardiology Foundation and the American Heart Association recommends.

APRIL 1st, 2022 — Avid Pulsara customers know that they can depend on Pulsara for all their clinical communication needs. But long shifts and overtime hours can make it difficult to find time for extracurricular communication—particularly of the dating kind. 

We hear you. That's why Pulsara is excited to announce our upcoming version of the Pulsara app: Tindara. 

Spring has officially arrived in the Northern Hemisphere, and daylight savings has come and gone (hopefully for the last time!)... which means we are already a quarter of the way through 2022! Continue reading to discover what Pulsara has been up to in March and all the great opportunities coming our way in April.

The newly expanded platform allows first responders and healthcare providers to support behavioral health patients via telehealth and streamlined transfers. 

Bozeman, Mont., March 22, 2022 — Pulsara, the leading mobile telehealth, communication, and logistics platform that unites healthcare teams and technologies across organizations during dynamic events, recently released a dedicated behavioral health patient type allowing EMS crews, hospital teams, and other healthcare organizations to better support behavioral health patients. EMS or other first responders can now directly connect with behavioral health facilities, teams, or individuals through live group video and audio calling to receive help in determining the most appropriate treatment for the patient. For teams working with patients who need enhanced behavioral health services, this new patient type helps streamline placement to a more appropriate facility. Utilizing this new functionality on the Pulsara platform, clinicians can quickly facilitate appropriate real-time treatment for patients, help relieve overcrowded healthcare facilities, and save time, money, and resources by avoiding unnecessary and extended ED visits.

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. 

What if EMS could “see into the future," having access to critical details about a hospital's ED availability status—such as whether it was at capacity during a mass casualty event or whether its CT scanner was down—before they even reached the hospital? If EMS knew a hospital's ED availability ahead of time, they could quickly reroute their patients to the closest alternative available care, saving precious time for patients and care teams.

Now, they can. 

Introducing Pulsara's newest feature: ED Availability.

With this new feature, healthcare facilities and EMS agencies can now access ED Availability information directly from the platform. Specifically, critical details about a hospital’s capability to accept patients can be easily updated by each facility and will appear to EMS and Ambulance crews when choosing a destination. This means improved decision-making for EMS and faster, more efficient care for patients in their most critical moments. 

When EMS providers start a new patient case in Pulsara and go to select their destination, they'll now not only be able to see the available facilities in their area—they'll also be able to see the hospital's emergency department availability status, updated in real time by the facility. 

ED Availability allows healthcare facilities to post status updates about their Emergency Department's availability directly to the Pulsara platform. Hospitals that enable ED Availability can update their status in a matter of seconds by switching out their icon and/or adding a brief comment. Read on to learn more!

It has now been a full two months of accidentally writing "2021" instead of "2022," and there are no signs of it stopping anytime soon. While still adjusting to the new year, Team Pulsara has been excited to jump into the ever-growing list of awesome conferences available around the globe!

New functionality allows hospitals to notify EMS of ED availability, improving efficiency, collaboration, and patient care

The COVID-19 pandemic has lengthened response times for ambulance agencies worldwide, making it much more difficult to find placement for patients. A recent report released by Australia’s Ambulance Victoria confirmed that this trend has worsened significantly in the state of Victoria during the last three months of 2021, showing a significant increase in response times across the region.  

The new data from Ambulance Victoria shows that paramedics’ ability to respond to code 1 emergencies within the recommended standard of 15 minutes dropped by 12% over the previous 12 months, going from 79% in October to December of 2020 to 67% during the same period in 2021. This means that around one-third of code 1 emergencies waited more than 15 minutes for responders to arrive. Melbourne’s suburbs have been disproportionately affected by the delays, owing to distance. Towns like Melton and Cardinia averaged around 53%. 

Chaos is woven into the DNA of emergent care. Emergency care professionals face the unknown around every corner—from supporting a low acuity patient to managing a mass casualty event. You never know what you’re going to get. 

Sometimes, you have a day that’s more chaotic than others. Other times, the chaos lasts much longer than a day—it can become a lasting situation that extends into months and even years. Few seasons have been quite as chaotic as the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID has tested and tried our healthcare systems to the breaking point, introducing factors like virus spikes, hospitalization surges, burnout, and staffing shortages. 

To keep growing, keep improving, and keep adapting to the situation, some things will need to change. The problem is, it seems impossible to do anything about the situation while you’re treading water. It can feel like trying to bail out a rowboat as you continue to paddle—trying to do everything all at the same time. But if you can introduce a change that will help either paddle the boat or bail with less effort, the time and energy it takes to implement that change will ultimately help make the job easier for the long term. 

JANUARY Recap

Pulsara's first conference of the year was a success! With seven of our Pulsarians in attendance - including our CEO/Founder and President - the NAEMSP Conference in San Diego, CA created opportunities to strengthen relationships with customers and nurture relationships with those seeking positive change in their healthcare system. 

How one rural Arkansas county is using integrated telehealth, communication, and logistics technology to treat patients faster

Bozeman, Mont., Jan. 12, 2022 —  Pulsara, the leading mobile telehealth, communication, and logistics platform that unites healthcare teams and technologies across organizations during dynamic events, published new details on Arkansas-based Saline Memorial Hospital’s record improvements in patient care. The Saline Memorial Hospital Case Study reveals the unique challenges care teams were facing with a rapidly growing and dispersed population, and the solutions they found to markedly reduce treatment times, establish secure and reliable ECG transmissions, and improve real-time care team communication. 

Understanding Why Your Customer Operates the Way They Do, and How Your Product Can Help

Customer success is an art form. There is so much that goes into it: knowing workflow nuances, being aware of political subtleties, personality differences, current best practices, geographical needs, network systems of care, tech partners and competition, health status, data, etc., etc.

How do we do all this? 

Customer success is definitely an art, but there are some sound practices you can use to help set your customers up for a positive experience. Here are 5 keys to customer success in healthcare technology. 

2021 was yet another year of all things new and "unprecedented," and Pulsara has worked hard to keep up with the rapidly changing healthcare system in this season of change. Join us as we look back at what Pulsara has been up to during the winter of 2021, and look ahead to what's coming up in 2022. 

COVID-19 has taught us quite a bit about our current methods for communicating in a crisis. Whether you are currently experiencing a COVID-19 surge, are anticipating your next surge, or are catching up from your last surge, there is no doubt about one thing: the past two years have exposed many of the flaws in our system. There is good news, though. Now that we can pinpoint, identify, and examine some of the flaws, we have a clear path toward some new ways that we can set ourselves up for success in the future. 

Over the course of the pandemic, we’ve seen firsthand the results of our current systems. We now know that very few are truly prepared for all hazards and stress events. 

It has been a challenging year in healthcare. The second year of the COVID-19 pandemic has brought burnout, staffing shortages, and the continued struggles associated with trying to care for patients during a pandemic. 

In the midst of it all, many healthcare systems have risen to the challenge and devoted themselves to providing better, faster, and more efficient care for their patients. They've achieved amazing things in 2021, and, in spite of the setbacks and challenges, have found ways to continue to deliver top-notch care for their patients.

Join us as we take a walk through Pulsara's 2021 case studies, celebrate the stories of some of our partner organizations, and highlight the amazing results they've achieved this year!

If you work in EMS, you experience many challenges during your shift. These challenges begin with always being in a state of readiness to safely arrive on-scene. Once you're there, you jump directly into the thick of the challenge and immediately start assessing problems with the information you can obtain at the time. It’s stressful, exhausting, exhilarating, and yet addictive at the same time—all these things and more.

Aside from treating and transporting patients, there are constantly other things to keep up with: ongoing training for new or updated software, equipment and devices, the latest industry treatment recommendations, and agency rules and regulations. Can EMS workers become fatigued, burned out, and experience depression? Absolutely! Why do they continue to do it, then?

Because while these challenges can and often do occur, there’s something internally higher that drives them to be a part of a “greater good”—to undergo uncomfortable situations for the benefit of others. This at its root is called altruism. Altruism has many shades of definition, but at its core, altruism is about individuals who put the needs and concerns of others above their own comfort and well-being. Altruism is a common trait for many in EMS. One example—amongst many—is a paramedic working out in freezing weather trying to safely extricate a patient from an MVA.

Pulsara assists healthcare organizations by enhancing their communication experience during a patient encounter. We offer the ability to communicate important information about a patient's status through a variety of ways, including traditional phone calls, text-based messaging, and video/voice calls through Pulsara Calling.

Ouachita County Medical Center (OCMC) is a not-for-profit hospital with 99 beds, serving residents of the rural community surrounding the city of Camden in southern Arkansas, about 100 miles from Little Rock. As a smaller, non-PCI facility, OCMC often coordinates transfers for their STEMI patients to PCI facilities.

Previously, when a patient arrived in the OCMC emergency room with a STEMI, whether by ambulance or private car, staff would first page a cardiologist at the patient’s preferred receiving facility, then wait for the physician to call back. Only then could they start the process of transferring the patient to a percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) facility that could provide critical care. “Then we had to get a bed confirmed, and then we had to wait to get our EMS service to take the patient. And then, usually, most of those patients at that time went to Little Rock, which is about an hour and a half from where we are,” explained Jennifer Ray, RN, OCMC’s ER and ICU manager. “So the timeliness of the patient getting in and out was very, very slow.” How slow? During 2017, the average door-in, door-out (DIDO) time was 72 minutes for the 19 STEMI patients who came into the OCMC ER—more than double the 30 minutes or less recommended by the American College of Cardiology Foundation and the American Heart Association.

Editor's Note: This article was originally posted on Becker's Hospital Review under the title "From communication silos to unified communication: 4 takeaways on a new system for improving the patient journey."

The traditional patient journey is plagued by communication silos. Multiple healthcare providers are involved in a patient's care from start to finish, but many times they don't have the tools needed to communicate effectively with each other. Pulsara enables unified communication that dismantles these silos, providing a single source of truth between disparate care teams that improves emergency care coordination.

In a November webinar hosted by Becker's Hospital Review, Joey Branton, Pulsara's Senior Vice President for Strategic Initiatives, discussed the silos in healthcare communication and described how Pulsara's solution provides improved networked communication with a system of care that scales.

Here are four key takeaways from the presentation:

The past two years have done a great deal to redefine the shifting identity of EMS. COVID-19 changed a lot about how we provide care, and some of the solutions we came up with have led to a watershed of self-discovery. With that, though, comes an equal number of questions. What does the shifting landscape of healthcare mean for EMS? What will the role of EMS be going forward? As the identity of EMS evolves and medics are given more agency, will they be able to help find solutions for problems like overcrowded emergency departments, while also giving patients both a better and more appropriate care experience? 

Corey Ricketson, Pulsara's Vice President of Strategic Accounts, recently had the opportunity to discuss these and other hot topics in EMS with Chris Cebollero on The Inside EMS podcast, hosted by EMS1. Corey shares his experiences visiting multiple EMS agencies throughout the country, as well as some top takeaways from how leading EMS agencies are finding solutions to issues like ED overcrowding. Chris and Corey talk community paramedicine, how EMS needs to adapt for the future, the importance of meeting patients where they are, and how interoperability, connection, and communication should be a main focus for EMS agencies.

Listen to the podcast below, and read on for part 2 of the interview! (If you missed part 1, check it out here.)

The past two years have done a great deal to redefine the shifting identity of EMS. COVID-19 changed a lot about how we provide care, and some of the solutions we came up with have led to a watershed of self-discovery. With that, though, comes an equal number of questions. What does the shifting landscape of healthcare mean for EMS? What will the role of EMS be going forward? As the identity of EMS evolves and medics are given more agency, will they be able to help find solutions for problems like overcrowded emergency departments, while also giving patients both a better and more appropriate care experience? 

Corey Ricketson, Pulsara's Vice President of Strategic Accounts, recently had the opportunity to discuss these and other hot topics in EMS with Chris Cebollero on The Inside EMS podcast, hosted by EMS1. Corey shares his experiences visiting multiple EMS agencies throughout the country, as well as some top takeaways from how leading EMS agencies are finding solutions to issues like ED overcrowding. Chris and Corey talk community paramedicine, how EMS needs to adapt for the future, the importance of meeting patients where they are, and how interoperability, connection, and communication should be a main focus for EMS agencies.

Listen to the podcast below, and read on for part 1 of the full interview! 

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

As Lead Implementation Project Manager at Pulsara, I help manage the implementation of our software at hospitals. My background is not clinical. Like the rest of the global population, I’ve been reacting, adjusting, and trying to comprehend the results of precisely what COVID-19 has done to our society, and especially our healthcare system. As the Delta variant surge began mid-summer, I had yet to get an inside personal look at how the COVID-19 pandemic affected our healthcare system.

And then, in early September, I got the eye-opening chance to visit a hospital.

One healthcare system used Pulsara to achieve record door-to-puncture times and improved inter-organizational team communication for better care coordination. 

BOZEMAN, Mont., Nov. 22, 2021 — Pulsara, the leading mobile telehealth, communication, and logistics platform that unites healthcare teams and technologies across organizations during dynamic events published new details on Seattle-based EvergreenHealth’s record improvements in patient care. Reporting on their hospital and stroke program growth—and the increased communication challenges that growth brought on—the EvergreenHealth Case Study reveals the solutions they found to streamline care and communication across the whole organization spanning three sites. 

Serving a population of nearly 850,000 residents, EvergreenHealth is a growing two-hospital healthcare system with two emergency departments—one in Kirkland, Washington, and a freestanding emergency department in Redmond, Washington. Historically, the stroke teams were using pagers and audio calls to coordinate care. However, as both the hospitals and the stroke program grew, they began straining the limits of what former standard technologies could support. 

EDITOR’S UPDATE: The ET3 program is mentioned throughout the below interview. Please note that, 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. Be advised that Mobile Integrated Healthcare and Community Paramedicine are separate initiatives and are unaffected by the ET3 program termination.

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What if you could keep hundreds of low-acuity patients a week from having to needlessly go to the emergency room? With a scalable system of care, Austin-Travis County EMS is doing just that. In just three weeks, they kept 434 low-acuity patients out of the hospital—rerouting them to faster and more appropriate care via their ET3 clinic partner agency and the telehealth communications and logistics platform Pulsara.

Recently, Commander Steve White and Dr. Carlos Navarro presented a webinar to share their experience with creating the C4 unit, walk through a case study, and offer tangible takeaways and cutting-edge insights. If you haven't yet had the chance to catch up on the conversation, check out part 1 and part 2.

Read on to hear from Commander White and Dr. Navarro as they host a Q&A, answering audience questions about their system, how it works, and how its principles can be applied to other organizations. 

Baptist Health in Little Rock, Arkansas, is using new technology to reduce treatment times and deliver better patient care. Dr. Wendell Pahls, Medical Director of Emergency and Transfer Services at Baptist Health, spoke to The Vine about how Pulsara is helping them streamline communication and cut down treatment times. 

"It's really cool," said Dr. Pahls. "We've taken a very fundamental concept, which is that the sooner that we can treat you for time-sensitive illnesses—like strokes, heart attacks, and things like that—the sooner we can get you into definitive care, the better off you'll be. Everybody these days carries around one of these: a cell phone," he said. With Pulsara's communication and logistics platform, Baptist Health has been able to link all their different providers together on one patient channel, facilitating better communication around each patient—and, as a result, better, faster patient care. 

Check out the video interview here! 

What if you could keep hundreds of low-acuity patients a week from having to needlessly go to the emergency room? And what if, by doing so, you could reduce or eliminate the challenge of slow turnaround times, free up much-needed EMS and hospital resources, and help patients get the care they need faster, more affordably, and more efficiently?

Austin-Travis County EMS is doing just that. With a scalable system of care, they kept 434 low-acuity patients out of the hospital in just three weeks—rerouting them to faster and more appropriate care via the interconnected support of their ET3 clinic partner agency and the telehealth communications and logistics platform Pulsara.

On October 19th, Commander Steve White and Dr. Carlos Navarro shared their experience with creating the C4 unit, walked through a case study, and shared tangible takeaways and cutting-edge insights that you can apply to your own organization today.

Check out part 2 of their presentation below! (If you haven't yet had the chance to read part 1, check it out here.) 

Telehealth Communications and Logistics Platform Honored for Improving Healthcare Delivery

BOZEMAN, Mont., Nov. 8, 2021 — Pulsara, the leading telehealth, communication, and logistics platform that unites healthcare teams and technologies across organizations during dynamic events announced today that the company has received a 2021 Telehealth Award from prominent healthcare technology news source HealthTechZone.com. The award recognizes companies innovating and improving health delivery and management towards exceptional customer experiences.

“On behalf of TMC and HealthTechZone, I would like to congratulate all of the Telehealth award winners,” said Rich Tehrani, CEO, TMC. “Every year I am so impressed by each winning company’s dedication to quality in solutions that benefit the overall customer experience—while driving ROI for companies that use them.”

The Evolution of “STRAUMA”: Using Innovation and Technology to Improve Trauma and Stroke Patient Care 

Not unlike other trauma centers, one of UCHealth Memorial Hospital Central's top mechanisms of injury is geriatric ground-level falls. As part of their Trauma performance improvement process, they identified an opportunity with relation to this population in which both Trauma and Stroke alerts were required. While they had their Trauma and Stroke alerts dialed in, they realized they still had a problem: their communication systems were not as fast or efficient as they could be when dealing with patients that needed coordinated care from both the Trauma and Stroke teams. They saw an opportunity to streamline alerts and coordination of care for those types of patients.

Presented by the American Trauma Society, with speakers Heather Finch, MSN, RN, CEN, TCRN, Manager of Trauma Services at UCHealth Memorial Hospital Central in Colorado Springs, CO along with moderator Kate Leatherby, Regional Vice President - West at Pulsara, learn how UCHealth turned all of that around with a little bit of innovation and technology. UCHealth Memorial Hospital Central has improved efficiency, eliminated phone calls to multiple people, and created a novel “STRAUMA” alert (Trauma + Stroke) with dual team notification and response for improved patient care and team coordination. 

Webinar Event Details

Date: Thursday, November 11th, 2021

Time: 1:00 PM EDT | 12:00 PM CDT | 11:00 AM MDT | 10:00 AM PDT

Cost: FREE

Webinar Host: American Trauma Society

The Future-Proof Health System: How Dismantling Communication Siloes Can Support Better Care Delivery Today and Tomorrow

In the largest pandemic of our lifetime, learn how healthcare leaders are using a unified communication and logistics platform to not only manage the COVID-19 crisis, but also lay the foundation for a new reality in healthcare—including the dismantling of communication silos between disparate care teams, single source of truth patient care coordination, and systems of care that scale.

Presented by Joey Branton, Senior Vice President of Strategic Initiatives at Pulsara, this presentation will provide tangible takeaways that you can apply to your own organization.

With back-to-back events all month, October has come and gone in a flash. Let's take a look at the exciting things Team Pulsara has been up to in October, and find out where you can catch us on the road in November and December.

Editor's Update: The ET3 program is mentioned throughout the below interview. Please note that, 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. Be advised that Mobile Integrated Healthcare and Community Paramedicine are separate initiatives and are unaffected by the ET3 program termination.

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What if you could keep hundreds of low-acuity patients a week from having to needlessly go to the emergency room? And what if, by doing so, you could reduce or eliminate the challenge of slow turnaround times, free up much-needed EMS and hospital resources, and help patients get the care they need faster, more affordably, and more efficiently?

Austin-Travis County EMS is doing just that. With a scalable system of care, they kept 434 low-acuity patients out of the hospital in just three weeks—rerouting them to faster and more appropriate care via the interconnected support of their ET3 clinic partner agency and the telehealth communications and logistics platform Pulsara.

On October 19th, Commander Steve White and Dr. Carlos Navarro shared their experience with creating the C4 unit, walked through a case study, and shared tangible takeaways and cutting-edge insights that you can apply to your own organization today.

Check out part 1 of their presentation below! 

In April of 2021, New Zealand Health Minister Andrew Little announced plans to abolish the 20 district health boards (DHBs) and replace them instead with a single organization called Health New Zealand, which will be responsible for hospitals across the country. 

The unexpected announcement was a major indicator of changes to come in New Zealand's health system. As the system reforms its organizational and decision-making structure, they are also looking for a solution to a fragmented data system in health IT. 

New Zealand has struggled with a fragmented process for transmitting patient data for many years. Current processes don't allow for the seamless, secure transmission of patient data between facilities.

On March 2, 2021, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released a report detailing trends in the utilization of Emergency Department services between 2009 and 2018. Between 2009 and 2016, ED rates slowly but steadily increased. During the COVID-19 pandemic, ED volume rates have trended down, but the number of people needing care has not changed. And during COVID surges, open beds have become a precious commodity. 

The increased demand on medical providers' time and resources has been met with a particularly intriguing solution involving a newer model of care: community paramedicine.

Editor's Note: The following content originally appeared on EMS1.com. Special thanks to our guest blogger, Drew Rinella for EMS1 BrandFocus. 

Specialty patients present unique challenges to EMS providers in the field. Whether it's a rare medical condition, an unusual medical device, or an unfamiliar treatment, specialized conditions will require different considerations from more routine calls. But don't worry; even if you aren't familiar with the patient's condition or device, there are some practices you can use to help minimize the degree of unfamiliarity and still provide top-notch care for your patient. 

Here are 10 things you need to know about caring for specialty patients and managing resources around their care.

2023 Editor's Update: Please note that, 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. Be advised that Mobile Integrated Healthcare and Community Paramedicine are separate initiatives and are unaffected by the ET3 program termination.

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Force Multiplier Patient Care: How EMS Leaders are Revolutionizing the Industry through ET3 Clinic Partner Agencies & Mobile Technology

What if you could keep hundreds of low-acuity patients a week from having to needlessly go to the emergency room? And what if, by doing so, you could reduce or eliminate the challenge of slow turnaround times, free up much-needed EMS and hospital resources, and help patients get the care they need faster, more affordably, and more efficiently?

Austin-Travis County EMS is doing just that. With a scalable system of care, they kept 434 low-acuity patients out of the hospital in just three weeks—rerouting them to faster and more appropriate care via the interconnected support of their ET3 clinic partner agency and the telehealth communications and logistics platform Pulsara.

Presented by Steve White, Commander of Texas’s Austin-Travis County EMS Collaborative Care Communication Center Initiative (C4), along with Dr. Carlos Navarro, Medical Director for Care Value Optimization, Austin market WellMed Medical Management, the speakers will share tangible takeaways and cutting-edge insights that you can apply to your own organization today.

Debunking the Myths of Integrated Mobile Technology

For a long time, pagers have been considered the logical choice for hospitals because they can get a message through even when a cell phone can’t get a signal. They have been standard in healthcare for over 40 years — for good reason. 

However, mobile technology has come a long way over the past two decades. It's become the way we communicate for everything else in our lives. We text friends and family members. We can even order a pizza and track it to the front door. In the healthcare world, there have been holdups to converting to mobile technology, mostly due to concerns about the reliability of smartphones when compared to pagers. So, let's compare, contrast, and bust a few myths about pagers....

It has been a rough eighteen months for all disciplines within healthcare. Since the start of the pandemic, call volumes have increased. More people need help. And yet, as the pandemic drags on, there are fewer and fewer providers still on the job. Emergency services organizations around the world are experiencing staffing shortages. Headline after headline after headline has demonstrated that the problem is both severe and widespread.

Many factors have contributed to staffing shortages in EMS across the United States, as well as ambulance services in the UK and Australia. These factors will need to be addressed soon. In the meantime, however, those still on the job are left looking for ways to continue providing care for their patients. Staffing shortages are hard enough but are made even worse for those left behind when the lack of providers starts to impact the level of care they can provide. 

Over the past year, telehealth became a favored tool in non-emergent care for helping clinicians treat patients from a distance. However, many EMS organizations are now discovering that leveraging telehealth as a part of normal practice can actually help save time, preserve resources, and increase the output of smaller crews. 

If you're struggling with staffing shortages, here are a few ways telehealth may be able to help you work with the resources you have. 

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared on EMS1.com. Special thanks to our guest author,EMS1 BrandFocus Staff. 

This step-by-step guide will help you plan, prepare and apply for grant funding to support your EMS organization

Many public safety organizations find themselves with tight budgets, asked to do more with less – especially with declining tax revenues and increased calls for service during the pandemic. Grant funding is a good way to supplement your annual budget, and there are plenty of resources, whether public (state, federal and local) or private (foundations, corporations, etc.).

The coronavirus pandemic significantly challenged and strained our nation’s healthcare system, including EMS agencies from coast to coast. Lawmakers have enacted legislation providing about $5.3 trillion to help mitigate the economic burden. In particular, the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 provides aid to help first responders and healthcare professionals.

If you are just beginning your search for grant funding or are familiar with grants but unsure of how to prepare an application, here are 10 best practices for success when searching for and applying for grant funds:

September Recap

To kick off a busy September, Pulsara was selected as a JEMS 2021 Hot Product Winner at EMS Today! Pulsara’s newest version and functionality allow emergency services teams to practice at an expanded scope with dynamic tools, including group video conferencing, deep linking, the Pulsara Summary Report, and more.

As a tertiary care center and Level I trauma facility in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the trauma team at UCHealth Memorial Hospital Central had their patient care process dialed in. However, there was one part of their process they weren’t satisfied with: their communication system.

The team was receiving notifications through an alarm dispatch system, which ran through the hospital operators and was then manually managed by each individual service line. UCHealth’s Associate Nurse Manager, Nikki Schroeder, BSN, RN, CEN, TCRN, described their process: “Prehospital providers would call in to our ED charge nurse, relay pertinent information, and then the ED charge nurse would determine what level of activation was required. To notify our hospital team, the charge nurse would give the information to our unit clerk, and our unit clerk would page our 811 paging system. That’s how the trauma surgeon, the ICU, and the whole trauma team got notified.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the world in innumerable ways, but it's growing increasingly apparent that it's contributed to a worldwide crisis of another kind: mental health.

The need for mental health resources in the UK is on a sharp incline. Dr Adrian James, the president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, recently stated that the pandemic has posed a great threat to mental health, and threatens to undo years of progress without a new injection of funds into the system. 

While mental health has been a growing need for a number of years, the demand has increased exponentially since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. In June of 2021, a record 1.5 million people across the UK received mental health treatment from the National Health Service (NHS). According to Dr James, many more desperately need that treatment. After a year of lockdowns, an estimated 1.6 million more people have come forward looking for help, and are waiting for treatment.

Change management is something I learned about during the course of my academic adventures, and at the time, it made a lot of sense. I could think of numerous examples of both failures and successes in change management that I had observed or been directly involved in during the span of my professional career. My studies had armed me with some valuable knowledge of different change management frameworks and ways to overcome and navigate process and people challenges. But I had never had a chance to apply my acquired skills in such a dramatic way until I started working at Pulsara.  

One of the first things I remember hearing about when I started at Pulsara was: “We have a saying here: change is 5% the technology, 15% process, and 80% about people.”

Pulsara’s powerful new functionality has received special recognition for its innovative and practical contributions to EMS and patient care. 

BOZEMAN, Mont., September 13, 2021 — Pulsara, the leading mobile telehealth, communication, and logistics platform that unites healthcare teams and technologies across organizations during dynamic events, and JEMS (Journal of Emergency Medical Services) are proud to announce the selection of Pulsara as a 2021 Hot Product at the virtual EMS Today Conference & Exposition. Pulsara’s newest functionality allows EMS teams to practice at an expanded scope with dynamic tools, including group video conferencing, deep linking, the Pulsara Summary Report, and more.

Through Pulsara, EMS can alert their Mobile Integrated Health (MIH) team for a patient who may be sick but not critical. The community paramedic arrives on scene, communicates via live video with their medical director, connects the patient with their primary physician, and creates a healthcare plan. This frees up ambulance crews to remain available for time-sensitive emergencies while less critical patients can receive treatment without transport.

PART 2 of 2

Editor’s Note — This is Part 2 on the events that took place on September 11, 2001, through the personal account of Chief John Peruggia, retired Chief of FDNY EMS. If you haven’t yet, please read Part 1 — Remembering 9/11 Through the Lens of FDNY’s Chief of EMS.

Planes hit. 

Buildings collapse. 

Lives are lost. 

Loved ones are lost. 

Grief. Fear. Anger. Mourning. 

Tragedies shape everything that comes after them, separating time into two distinct frames: Before, and After. 

The dust settles, and those left behind in its wake are left to pick up the pieces. 

Through the loss, through the darkness, come sparks of innovation. 

PART 1 of 2

Editor’s Note — I recently had the privilege of spending time with Chief John Peruggia, retired Chief of FDNY EMS. He shared his vivid memories of September 11, 2001, and how the world has (and hasn’t) changed over the past 20 years. Chief, thank you for your time and sacrifice to the EMS community.

Where were you on September 11, 2001? Instantly, each of us can vividly remember what we were doing when two planes collided with the World Trade Center. The stories that came from that day continue to echo down through the years, as we approach the 20th anniversary of the event.

But few people quite know the story like those who were there. 

Chief John Peruggia was one of those people. 

Meet Pulsara for live demos, simulations, and a game-changing ECG integration to improve clinical workflows and communication.

BOZEMAN, Mont., September 6, 2021 — Pulsara, the leading mobile telehealth, communication, and logistics platform that unites healthcare teams and technologies across organizations during dynamic events, announced today that the company will be attending the Birmingham, UK Emergency Services Show where it will showcase its latest ECG integration with the Philips Tempus Pro advanced patient monitor. This state-of-the-art integration enables ambulance services to share Philips monitor diagnostic quality 12-lead ECGs directly with the A&E before arrival—across the Pulsara communication platform—enabling clinical teams to prepare for the patient’s arrival quickly.  

As the UK’s leading annual showcase of the blue light sector, the Emergency Services Show will feature hundreds of exhibitors, live demos, learning opportunities, and premier networking. According to the show’s website, “The two-day event brings together all disciplines from the emergency services sector to discover innovative technology and operational solutions, share their experiences and unite in their collaborative approach to public safety.” 

August Recap

It was a busy month for Regional Sales Manager Wes Wood and others as they staffed the Pulsara booth at two in-person conferences and one virtual event. From Phoenix, AZ to San Antonio, TX, the flexibility and scalability of both our platform and team were evident at these exhibitions. 

COVID-19 has not seemed to slow down over the last few months; however, Pulsara is working hard to help our customers and their communities effectively manage the surge of patients and transfers throughout hospitals.  Both the Texas Emergency Medical Task Force (TX EMTF) and the Montgomery County Hospital District (MCHD) in Texas have leveraged Pulsara as an innovative solution and are able to not only reduce excessive phone calls, but also monitor their patients all through the mobile platform.

Pulsara also made groundbreaking strides forward in a rural and underserved Colorado community by integrating a telehealth and community paramedicine program with emergency services and hospitals in the area. After its success, the Teller County, CO leaders worked with Pulsara to publish a case study highlighting the radical development of their communities and how other emergency services agencies across the globe can do the same. Check out the video below:

As we head into the month of September, we kick off a busy conference season. Here's where you can find us!

Editor's Note: The following post is adapted from a presentation Dr. James Woodson recently gave at the Arab Health Conference in Dubai on June 24th, 2021 entitled "Enabling Networked Communication: How Innovations in Mobile Technology Can Be Leveraged For Better Quality Of Care." Though the content was specifically tailored for conference attendees, the principles Dr. Woodson shares apply to healthcare systems worldwide. Watch the full presentation below, or check out Part 1 and Part 2 of our blog coverage.

If you're looking to build a communication and logistics system that can scale to meet your needs, you'll need a strong infrastructure built on the right kind of technology. There are many different types of solutions out there, from platforms that have been built specifically to cover certain parts of the care process to popular platforms that weren't even designed for healthcare at all. 

So the key question is: What are the traits of a system that will scale to meet your needs, no matter what kind of situation is thrown at it?

As the founder and CEO of Pulsara, I've spent a lot of time researching, experimenting, and observing what works and what doesn't. Here are 8 things I've learned to look for in a communication and logistics solution that can meet your organization's needs, no matter the scale of the situation. 

Editor's Note: On August 11th, EMS1, Fitch & Associates, and the National EMS Management Association released their fourth annual EMS Trend Report, proudly sponsored by Pulsara. Because the articles and advice found within contain such critical subject matter, we've elected to publish each segment one at a time here on our blog. Read, enjoy, share, and take to heart the following information brought to you by the most prestigious thought leaders in EMS. Today's entry is written by Pulsara's very own Chief Marketing Officer, Kris Kaull.

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As COVID-19 continues to shape the landscape of healthcare, many profession-altering changes are here to stay. The most impactful of these is the paradigm shift to the “connected worker.”

While this may be a new term in healthcare, it has been covered extensively in manufacturing. As Natan Linder wrote in Forbes, “For years, we interpreted poor manufacturing outcomes to poor human performance (as much as 70% of mistakes in factories occur on human-centric processes). But things changed with the fundamental insight that humans aren’t actually the problem. Badly designed or overly complex work systems are.”

Healthcare faces even greater challenges. There was a time where a healthcare professional may have shined based on their clinical expertise alone. But this is no longer the case. I met with a neurologist in Seattle who told me that she makes, on average, 17 phone calls before she sees a stroke patient. Consider the time-sensitive tasks and coordination that need to be completed by a team in order to properly treat a critical patient: multiple phone calls, pages, answering services, handwritten notes, and radio communications.

When COVID-19 struck Texas in early 2020, Montgomery County Hospital District suddenly faced a whole host of new problems. Patients were still calling 911 and needed emergent care, but not all of them needed—or wanted—to be transported to the hospital. Paramedics were daily putting themselves at risk as they entered environments that could expose them to COVID-19. 

“Early on, we didn't know what was going to happen,” said Rob Dickson, MD, FAAEM, FACEP, FACEM, and EMS Medical Director at MCHD. “And we were all—across the nation, across the world—struggling with procedures and PPE and how we could best look after our employees.”

MCHD had a brief window to come up with innovative solutions. They had been using Pulsara to streamline care team communication around stroke and STEMI patients. But in response to the crisis, they began using Pulsara for a completely different purpose: regularly checking in with their employees who had contracted or had been exposed to COVID-19.

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

COVID-19 has brought about a lot of challenges and changes in the healthcare industry. EMS agencies are BUSY. They have been pushing themselves to the max supporting their communities and putting themselves in harm’s way to help their communities through the COVID-19 pandemic. 

EMS agencies embody the value of grit. They get the job done at all costs, regardless of obstacles. This value is what makes EMTs and paramedics unique. They stay cognizant of their role in the community and in the chain of medical care, and they execute their job faithfully, regardless of the environment. This value of gritty determination makes up the culture of many EMS agencies and EMT professionals. 

Organizational culture is “a pattern of shared basic assumptions learned by a group as it solves its problems.”¹ It's the shared beliefs and values established by leaders and then communicated and reinforced in the environment, which ultimately shape team member perceptions, behaviors, and understanding.

When the COVID-19 pandemic flared in the state of Texas in early 2020, the state struggled to load balance their COVID-19 patients. Some areas of the state experienced overwhelming waves of surge, while other areas had available beds and resources. Matching the particular needs of complex patients with available beds and other resources necessary for each patient was difficult.

They sought out a solution that would help create a virtual placement center for smooth patient transfers—supporting effective COVID-19 management and surge mitigation and a 75% reduction in excessive phone calls.

Teller County, CO develops a first-of-its-kind telehealth program using Pulsara as the backbone for rural health communications

BOZEMAN, Mont., August 16, 2021 — Pulsara, the leading mobile telehealth, communication, and logistics platform that unites healthcare teams and technologies across organizations during dynamic events, published new details on Teller County, Colorado’s groundbreaking community paramedicine and telehealth program. Reporting on their initial challenges, the solutions they found, and results, the “911-INITIATED TELEMEDICINE: Next-Level Patient Care for Rural Colorado” case study reveals a new pathway forward for EMS agencies across the globe.

As COVID-19 escalated across the country in early 2020, EMS and hospital leaders in Teller County, CO identified that residents were reluctant to seek care—for any condition—at the hospital. “Up to 40% of our EMS volume does not want to go to the hospital once 911 arrives,” said Dr. Jeremy DeWall, EMS Medical Director for the Teller region. “Looking at our numbers, the fear was that we were missing a large group of people who were without healthcare or afraid to go to healthcare because of COVID-19.” 

Leveraging their already thriving community paramedicine program, Teller County’s Ute Pass Regional Health Service District and Emergency Medical Specialists, PC set in motion a new 911-initiated telemedicine program, utilizing Pulsara’s telehealth capabilities to address the acute needs of the community. 

Editor's Note: The following post is adapted from a presentation Dr. James Woodson recently gave at the Arab Health Conference in Dubai on June 24th, 2021 entitled "Enabling Networked Communication: How Innovations in Mobile Technology Can Be Leveraged For Better Quality Of Care." Though the content was specifically tailored for conference attendees, the principles Dr. Woodson shares apply to healthcare systems worldwide. (Watch the full presentation here, or check out Part 1 and Part 3 of our blog coverage.)

Poor communication in healthcare is an ongoing issue around the world. Miscommunication costs over $1.7 billion in the U.S. alone each year, causes 80% of serious medical errors during transitions of care, and contributes greatly to preventable deaths. 

When we look for the root cause of the problem, it's actually pretty simple: disconnected human work.

There's a brand new industry on the rise that revolves around the concept of the connected worker. Connected worker platforms started in manufacturing, and are starting to move into other industries. The basic idea behind them is to use a combination of hardware, network, and software tools to enable frontline workers to communicate with supervisors or fellow employees who are in another location. 

I think there is a lot that healthcare can learn from these types of platforms. We should be looking at the concept of the connected provider: a healthcare provider who navigates their environment and communicates with other team members through connective technologies. Mobile technology can enable clinicians to ask questions and share information with the right team member at the right time, empowering them to act on behalf of each individual patient within their broader system. 

Mental health is a growing need around the world. Over 50 million people in the United States alone—1 in 5 adults—are dealing with mental health issues. And the trend extends to all ages; 1 in 6 young people in the U.S. between the ages of 6 and 17 struggle with mental health. Living through a global pandemic has only made matters worse. In May 2021, Children's Hospital Colorado declared a state of emergency for pediatric mental health. 

Over the past few years, Ute Pass Regional Health Service District in Teller County, Colorado, has set out to improve care for mental health patients. They built a top-tier community paramedicine program uniquely trained to respond to mental health calls. They also equipped their community paramedics with Pulsara, a healthcare communications, telehealth, and logistics platform. The result is a dynamic program that meets mental health patients where they are. 

It's difficult to have a healthy team dynamic without good communication. 

But in healthcare, a positive team dynamic isn't the only thing depending on good communication. One retrospective analysis found that communication and teamwork issues were among the most frequent contributing factors to incident reports and adverse events. In fact, one report in the analysis showed that 30% of all surgical procedures included a communication failure. On top of that, 36% of those failures caused delays in treatment time, errors in the surgical procedure, or tension among the care team.

For patients, that's a significant impact on the quality of their care experience. Delays and errors can mean complications, a longer stay in the hospital, and an even longer road to healing. 

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article originally appeared on EMS1.com. Special thanks to our guest author, David Wright, MS, PA-C, NREMT-P, for EMS1 BrandFocus. 

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The most important initial care step is to stop the burning process, but it’s also critical to know how to identify the type of burn and estimate the total area affected to help select the most appropriate destination for the patient

You and your partner are responding to a 911 call. Dispatch informs you that your patient suffered a burn. There is no additional information available at this time because the caller is quite panicked.

Your mind starts to race – maybe it’s a child who pulled a hot pot of noodles on top of themselves, maybe it’s a teenager playing with gasoline, maybe it’s a firefighter who was battling a fire, maybe it’s a grandparent who fell on a space heater.

No matter the situation you find when you arrive on scene, there are a few basic principles that apply to all burn patients. Here are 10 things EMS providers need to know to better assess and treat burns.

July Recap

With our teams attending two trade shows — one in Georgia and the other in Mississippi — it seemed like the south couldn't get enough of our Pulsarians in July (or of Pulsara CMO Kris Kaull, who gave the keynote and presented a session at the ENGAGE User Conference). 

"Hello? Can you see us now?" That's right, folks! In July, Pulsara introduced an enhancement to the platform's calling capabilities — Group Video Conferencing!  The upgrade gives care teams the power to add multiple team members across organizations onto one video call.

To further support care teams, Pulsara introduces enhancements to the communication platform’s calling capabilities.

BOZEMAN, Mont., July 28, 2021 — Pulsara, the leading mobile telehealth, communication, and logistics platform that connects healthcare teams across organizations, announced today a recent enhancement to the platform: Pulsara calling featuring group video conferencing. This upgrade, available for all users of the platform at no extra charge, includes the ability to add multiple team members as needed across organizations and adds overall improved usability—including configurable default behavior for camera and speaker and advanced controls for call participants. 

“The group video conferencing addition to Pulsara calling marks an exciting next step in Pulsara’s journey to improve the lives of people in need and those who serve them,” said Erich Hannan, Pulsara’s Chief Technology Officer. “We've heard loud and clear from our customers how important exceptional audio and video experience is to support and enhance patient care. Pulsara calling with group video enables even more powerful and streamlined communication and collaboration across teams and organizations.”

Editor's Note: The following post is adapted from a presentation Dr. James Woodson recently gave at the Arab Health Conference in Dubai on June 24th, 2021 entitled "Enabling Networked Communication: How Innovations in Mobile Technology Can Be Leveraged For Better Quality Of Care." Though the content was specifically tailored for conference attendees, the principles Dr. Woodson shares apply to healthcare systems worldwide. (Watch the full presentation below or at this link, and check out Part 2 and Part 3 of our blog coverage.)

As a board-certified emergency physician, I practiced medicine for many years in several different areas of the United States. Through my clinical experience, I discovered that my passion was actually to focus on systems of care: How do you combine multiple different organizations, resources, and people together to quickly surround a patient and provide care for them?

For the past decade, I've been studying how to leverage mobile technology to be able to bring people together, and how to actually create a shared consciousness around a single patient event. 

Digital health is a massive, multi-faceted landscape. The current emphasis on chronic care management, health, and wellness is incredibly important—and as healthcare begins to decentralize, that's where the focus should be. However, my focus is on the acute care space and uniting care teams.

The acute care space usually serves patients that are often undifferentiated and have an unscheduled and unstructured need. When an event happens, how do they enter into the acute care system? How do we get the right patient to the right facility with the right resources at the right time?

Time is everything in time-sensitive emergencies. But you don’t need us to tell you that. 

You know that time is tissue. You know that every minute counts, and every minute impacts your patient’s outcome. It’s your job: care for the patient, stabilize them, and transport them to the next stage in their care journey as quickly as possible. 

So why does it sometimes feel like the system isn’t built to support that? 

Delays in care happen for many, many reasons, but they all boil down to one thing: communication. 

We have a lot of different communication technologies that do the job they were meant to do: radios, pagers, phones, and fax machines. But they don’t talk to each other. With every middleman a message travels through, it’s another delay for your patient. And when time is of the essence, it’s essential to make sure that the right information gets to the right person at the right time.

When our customers experience the benefits of Pulsara—from faster door-to-needle times and minimized errors to improved team communication and reduced costs—it goes without saying that we love to share and celebrate their successes. LewisGale Regional Health System in southwest Virginia is just such a case, recently releasing both a press release and video testimonial about how Pulsara is helping them better support their patients and care teams.

From their press release:

“EMS plays a vital role in improving care for these patients, and we’ve known for some time that patients with life-threatening conditions receive faster treatment when EMS activate the appropriate hospital team from the field,” said Steven Pasternak, MD, emergency department medical director at LewisGale Medical Center. “This new, cloud-based, mobile technology further decreases the amount of time it takes to communicate vital data and activate hospital teams compared to traditional methods of communication between ERs and EMS. For example, if a patient has had a suspected cardiac event, the EKG administered by EMS in the field can be transmitted in real-time to the hospital, which enables the hospital to be ready to perform, if necessary, a cardiac catheterization procedure to open blocked arteries as soon as the patient arrives.”

Make a plan for treating pediatric pain that includes managing unfamiliarity and stress in both the patient and their parents or caregivers

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article originally appeared on EMS1.com. Special thanks to our guest author, Jonathan Lee, for EMS1 BrandFocus. 

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The most complete definition of pain is “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or resembling that associated with, actual or potential tissue damage” (IASP). It is a highly complex and subjective condition in any patient.

With pediatrics, this complexity is intensified by the fact that paramedics don’t encounter pediatric patients as frequently, creating more unfamiliarity and stress. Challenges related to paramedic training and exposure to pediatrics often lead to myths and misconceptions. Here are 10 important things every provider should know about managing pain in children.

As a medic, you matter to your patients’ care. 

You are the first person on the scene. You are the first to see the patient, to assess them, and to decide what kind of treatment they need. You decide whether they need transport to the ED, or whether they are safe to stay at home. 

Your decisions guide and influence the rest of their care journey. 

For most medics, involvement with a patient’s case ends when they drop the patient off at the hospital. Most don’t receive any feedback on the patient’s case, how their treatment went, or what their outcome was. Only one in three EMS agencies reports having any access to electronic, patient-specific medical information.

But...you need this kind of feedback. (What gets tracked gets improved.)

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article originally appeared on EMS1.com. Special thanks to our guest author, Sarah Calams of EMS1 Frontline Voices. 

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Community paramedics are pioneering new ways to care for mental health patients – here’s how

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, EMS providers have seen an alarming uptick in patients refusing to go to their doctor’s office or the emergency room. Many others – including those with urgent conditions – have even been hesitant to call 911.

“We saw patients who were just foregoing all of their medical care – they were ignoring their emergency conditions,” said James McLaughlin, director of the community paramedicine program at Ute Pass Regional Health Service District in Woodland Park, Colorado.

To ease his community’s fears, McLaughlin introduced a new Healthcare Options Mobility and Engagement, or HOME, program, which pairs an in-home paramedic visit with a telehealth consult by a physician – like Dr. Jeremy DeWall, EMS medical director at Ute Pass Regional Health Service District.

As the pandemic subsides, EMS leaders and organizations are not just in recovery mode; they are also reevaluating and restructuring their care systems based on what they’ve learned. From routine patient transports to the largest pandemic of our lifetime to managing Texas’s devastating winter ice storm in February 2021, Texas EMS clinical leaders are using scalable mobile technology to lay the foundation for the new reality of EMS—including Mobile Integrated Healthcare, Community Paramedicine, and Telehealth.

Are your systems of care flexible and scalable enough to handle daily operations and also quickly adapt to the next disaster, active shooter incident, or large-scale event?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Special thanks to Brett Lyle for writing today's blog post. You can connect with her on LinkedIn. 

Annual Celebrations Bring Us Together

National holidays bring people together. We spend time with friends, families, and neighbors. We unite in common celebrations. 

But this last year has been different. 

Unity

In healthcare, the word unity has taken on a much greater meaning in the wake of COVID-19. As the world buckled under the weight of a global pandemic and many retreated into isolation, healthcare providers pulled together and risked their own safety to serve others. Information was shared across borders to help each other navigate uncharted territory. 

We asked ourselves many important questions: Are we putting our needs aside for the health, safety, and security of the general population? Are we doing things for the greater good? Are we sacrificing the right things and for the right reasons?

June Recap

As many areas of the U.S. reached record-high temps, our Pulsarians managed to keep their cool in June as they kicked off the return to in-person trade shows, attending two stateside, and our first internationally in Dubai. 

June was a big month for Pulsara for another reason....we announced our first annual healthcare and user group Conference, Pulsara CONNECT! Coming to you virtually from the comfort of your home on October 12 - 13, Pulsara CONNECT is our way of giving back to the healthcare community after a challenging and transformative year. Registration is now open for the FREE virtual Pulsara CONNECT Conference.

Do you ever get tired of repeating yourself as you tell the same patient story multiple different times, to multiple different audiences?

You write on the back of your glove to keep track of what’s happening with your patient on scene and during transport. You deliver your report to the hospital via radio, to let them know what to expect when you arrive. You give an in-person inpatient report when you hand off the patient at the bedside, and you may also have to complete a leave-behind hand-written “short form.” And finally, you’ve got the patient care report that you complete afterward, within 24 hours of the case. 

That’s at least five different times you have to repeat the same basic information to update everyone who needs to be in the know. 

What if there was a better way? (Hint: there is!)

In time-sensitive emergencies, it’s easy to see how each passing minute impacts a patient’s outcome, for better or worse. The faster a patient receives treatment, the better chances they have at a good outcome. When you’re performing a time-sensitive intervention for a stroke or trauma patient, you know that every minute matters. 

But what happens after the patient is admitted to the hospital? What about the minutes slipping past that aren’t quite as noticeable: the time while a patient recovers, waiting to be discharged? 

How does the length of a patient’s stay in the hospital impact their outcome?

CONNECT with industry leaders on the latest research and best practices in STEMI, stroke, and emergency management in a post-COVID-19 world. 

BOZEMAN, Mont., June 21, 2021 — Pulsara, the leading telehealth and communication platform that connects teams across organizations, announced today the company’s inaugural Pulsara CONNECT Conference. Slated for October 12-13, 2021, this FREE virtual international experience allows attendees to engage with world-class industry experts and thought leaders across the healthcare community. With four tracks—EMS/Community Paramedicine, STEMI/Cardiac, Stroke/Neuro, and DES/Emergency Management—attendees will take away tangible best practices that they can incorporate within their region. Topics include everything from the latest research and best practices surrounding time-sensitive emergencies to creating systems of care that scale in a world attempting to recover from COVID-19 and prepare for what might be next.

New technology is often an exciting prospect. It's fun to experiment with, especially when it promises to help streamline a cumbersome process. But ultimately, the true test of technology is whether it actually improves the way you do things...and when it comes to technology in healthcare, how it helps you provide better care for your patients.  

So when a group of leading experts and clinicians in Victoria, Australia implemented Pulsara to improve communication between their care teams, they were curious about what the innovative new technology could do for them. But more importantly, they wanted to see what it could do for their patients.

Over the past few years, they have successfully developed a streamlined system for making sure everyone on the team has the right information at the right time. And, they're happy to report, their new system has helped them provide stellar care for their patients.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Special thanks to Brittany Norman for writing today's blog post. You can connect with her on LinkedIn. 

2020 was a year of pivots.

Movies being released on streaming services and Netflix rather than in theaters. Peloton and home virtual gym sales through the roof. Zoom & Microsoft Teams replacing the office board room. All of these are shining examples of our ability to use technology to adapt during the perilous times of COVID-19. With our need to remain connected while isolated, we saw everything from your cousin’s baby shower to your favorite artist’s concert taking place online.

So what was the answer that Pulsara, a company already based in healthcare communication and connection, had for the sudden need for flexibility that the global pandemic demanded?

Enter: Pulsara PATIENT. 

Have you ever noticed how challenging it can be to describe what you see to a person not presently with you? You could be witnessing some spectacular spectacle or some terrifying sight, but try as you might to communicate your experience, your words seem weak.

However, send a photo of what you see, and suddenly there's mutual understanding. The image instantly conveys context and meaning. You've heard the phrase "a picture is worth a thousand words" repeated time and again. Cliché notwithstanding, this phrase continues to ring true in human communications.

Change management is hard. Adopting new technology and new workflows can be an exciting process, but that process may also bring hesitance, skepticism, fear, and doubt. It's not easy to change the way you've always done things. 

So when a group of leading experts and clinicians in Victoria, Australia implemented new technology to improve communication between their care teams, they worked hard to make sure that everyone was on the same page. And it worked. They've seen a great deal of success with their strategies, and have successfully developed a streamlined system for making sure everyone on the team has the right information at the right time—a system that their teams now love. 

Becker's Hospital Review recently reported that as of April, 354 rural hospitals in the U.S. are still at a high risk of closing, unless their finances immediately improve. Those 354 hospitals account for almost exactly 25% of all 1,430 rural hospitals in the United States. Every state has at least one hospital with a high risk of closure, though, in states like Oklahoma, that number is as high as 28. 

As rural hospitals look for solutions, some are turning to technology to come up with new and innovative ways to find the funds to keep their doors open. Among the most surprising? Telehealth. 

Large Vessel Occlusion (LVO) strokes are considered to be one of the most severe types of strokes. As with all other stroke types, rapid treatment is key. Mechanical thrombectomy is now the accepted standard of care for treating LVO, meaning that it's critical to take the patient to an interventional-capable facility as quickly as possible—even if that means taking them somewhere further away than the closest available hospital. Time is of the essence; are you up to speed on what to look for when assessing for LVO? 

Patient care involves many moving parts, several teams, and a lot of people. How do you get everybody on the same page, especially when messages have to travel through multiple communication methods before they reach their intended recipient? How do you unite all the disparate teams involved in a patient's healthcare journey—from ambulance to emergency department to specialty teams—into one region-wide system of care? 

Over the last few years, a group of leading experts and clinicians in Victoria, Australia have implemented cutting-edge technology to improve communication between their care teams. They've seen a great deal of success with their strategies, and have developed a streamlined system for making sure everyone on the team has the right information at the right time.  

In this three-part series, you'll hear directly from them on their search for a solution, the results they've seen, and the advice they would offer other systems that want to build their own regional system of care. 

View the full webinar video discussion below, or read on for Part 1 of the full roundtable! (Part 2 and Part 3 can be accessed here.)

The patient care report is one of the most crucial parts of a call. This is your chance to give the hospital a brief report about your patient and let them know that you're on your way, giving them time to prepare for your arrival. Typically, though, you have to deliver your report in the midst of a chaotic scene, and things are equally as hectic at the hospital. What information is essential to communicate to the hospital before arrival?

2021...So Far

It's (maybe not-so) hard to believe that we're almost halfway through 2021! With COVID-19 vaccinations rolling out and states opening up again, tradeshow season is once again upon us. Before we take a look at where our Pulsarians are heading in June, let's venture into the past for a quick recap of how Team Pulsara has been spending the first half of 2021. 

How one Mississippi hospital pioneered a cross-departmental triage workflow in their facility by leveraging a mobile-first telehealth communications platform

BOZEMAN, Mont., May 24, 2021 — Pulsara, the leading telehealth and communication platform that connects teams across organizations, announced today that St. Dominic Hospital, located in Jackson, MS, has pioneered an innovative new triage protocol that uses Pulsara’s platform to improve care team communication and patient care. After initially embracing Pulsara for front-end stroke and STEMI care, the hospital recently saw an opportunity to further improve other cross-departmental workflows via the same mobile-first platform.

While it’s critical that EMS providers stay on top of the latest clinical skills for saving lives, it’s also important to look for ways to improve overall operations, especially as ongoing changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic continue to change the way EMS providers deliver care.

From our free eBook, learn 10 things you need to know about four key operational issues, including interagency cooperation, the expanding role of telehealth in EMS, and lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic. We also explore how new innovations in your EMS station can help prepare providers to deliver the best patient care possible, as well as promote the safety and well-being of EMS providers themselves.

BOZEMAN, Mont., May 19, 2021 — Pulsara, the leading mobile telehealth and communication platform that connects healthcare teams across organizations, announced today that the company was named a 2021 SIIA CODiE Award finalist in the category of Best Business Technology Pivot. Finalists represent the best products, technologies, and services in software, information, and business technology.

Acknowledged as the premier awards program for the software and information industries for over 35 years, the SIIA CODiE Awards are produced by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), the principal trade association for the software, education, media, and digital content industries. Pulsara was honored as one of 153 finalists across the 43 business technology categories, including two categories in response to COVID-19.

As a medic, you never know what your next call could be. Of all healthcare providers, your job is often the most unpredictable. Some types of calls are much more straightforward than others...and sometimes, the ones you might have less experience on—such as pediatric or OB-GYN calls—can be nerve-wracking. How do you turn the calls that scare you into calls you feel confident heading into? 

Pulsara's Vice President - Medical OPS, Brandon Means, teamed up with EMS1 to produce an original video series of critical paramedicine tips and techniques, called Progressive Paramedic. In this week's video and blog post, we throwback to Brandon's paramedic days as he reviews the three reasons why it's important to be a lifelong learner in EMS. Check it out below!

Happy International Nurses Day! Acknowledging the dedication of nurses across the globe seems a fitting way to round out Nurses Week 2021. Through my nearly three decades as a nurse, I cannot recall a time when the recognition of hard work, sacrifice, and commitment nurses exhibit daily has ever been so publicly promoted as it has throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. From media stories on nurses giving up their full-time positions to travel to regions hit hardest with COVID-19 to assist their peers—to the WHO designating 2020 The Year of the Nurse—to community members rallying to celebrate and support hospital staff as they enter and leave their shifts, a greater awareness of the complexities of the nursing profession has emerged.

As stated by ICN President Annette Kennedy, “Politicians understand the cost of educating and maintaining a professional nursing workforce, but only now are many of them recognizing their true value.” While no one enters into nursing for notoriety or recognition, it is well deserved and greatly appreciated.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article originally appeared on EMS1.com. Special thanks to our guest author,  Marianne Meyers, BS, for EMS1 BrandFocus. 

EDITOR'S UPDATE: The ET3 program is mentioned throughout the below article. Please note that, 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. Be advised that Mobile Integrated Healthcare and Community Paramedicine are separate initiatives and are unaffected by the ET3 program termination.

Airway management is the set of procedures and techniques medical professionals use to ensure that a patient's breathing pathway does not become obstructed if at risk or to clear the airway if already obstructed. It is a critical, life-saving skill all medics must be well-versed in. 

But when should you manage a patient's airway? And why should you do it one way vs. another way?

Pulsara's Vice President for the Western Region, Brandon Means, teamed up with EMS1 to produce an original video series of critical paramedicine tips and techniques, called Progressive Paramedic. In this week's video and blog post, we throw back to Brandon's paramedic days as hereviews the three indications that a patient needs their airway managed. Check it out below!

EDITOR'S NOTE: Special thanks to Cynthia Bradford Lencioni for writing today's blog post. You can connect with her on LinkedIn. 

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Imagine that you are a paramedic in a rural region who has been summoned by 999 dispatch to the scene of a home accident. All you know is that there is a patient with suspected burns who is counting on you to save his life. When you arrive on scene, you quickly determine that your patient is a young child of about eight years of age with third-degree burns on at least 20% of his body, including his upper torso and head. He is deteriorating rapidly into shock. Given the extent of his injuries, you realize that per protocol, he needs immediate transport to a burn centre. As your partner begins to start an IV, you radio the regional command centre to provide the patient’s status and urgently request critical-care transport via air ambulance. Precious seconds turn into minutes as you stand by waiting for a reply from the command centre with an ETA for the air ambulance team... 

It’s an oft-quoted fact that for patients suffering from a stroke, 1.9 million neurons are lost every minute their condition goes untreated. Every minute makes a difference—not just between life and death, but in the patient's quality of life once they survive. Will they be able to walk downstairs? Feed themselves? Communicate with their loved ones?

There are many factors that determine how quickly it's possible for a patient to receive treatment. However, there is one consistent obstacle in the way of getting patients timely treatment: the time it takes providers to communicate vital information to everyone on the team. 

Looking for an excuse to go to Dubai?

Or perhaps you've been wanting to learn more about Middle East healthcare and would love the opportunity to network with global healthcare leaders and influencers (like Pulsara!) — facilitating the continuous advancement of healthcare in the region and the world?

Then look no further than the 2021 Arab Health Conference this June 21-24! In addition to opportunities like exclusive international networking and exposure to the newest state-of-the-art medical technologies and processes, you'll also not want to miss Dr. James Woodson, MD, FACEP, Founder and CEO of Pulsara, as he presents the session 'Enabling Networked Communication: How Innovations in Mobile Technology Can Be Leveraged for Better Quality of Care.' 

Read on to learn more!

CHI St. Vincent Adopts Advanced Communication System for Heart Attack, Stroke, and Trauma Patient Care

CHI St. Vincent became the first health system in Arkansas to implement the full suite of Pulsara communication capabilities for coordinated teams to dramatically improve responses for every patient type, including ST-Elevation Myocardial Infarction (STEMI) heart attacks, stroke and other trauma care scenarios. Pulsara is a telehealth and communication platform that enables HIPAA compliant, dynamic networked communications between EMS, hospitals, and other healthcare providers for any patient event. Following successful Arkansas trials at multiple hospitals that saw average Door-to-Device treatment time for STEMI patients reduced by 19-percent, allowing cardiologists to get patient blood vessels reopened faster, the Arkansas STEMI Advisory Council proposed that healthcare services begin adopting Pulsara statewide in April 2020.

In the early 2000s, if you had told someone you could Facetime someone across the world, they would have asked what "Facetime" is. Fast forward to early 2015’s declaration by TechCrunch contributor Tom Goodwin: “Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate.”

Software is allowing for the decentralization of goods and services and has created an environment that can connect the masses. "Decentralization" refers to the transfer of control and decision-making from one centralized entity to a distributed network. It means your network has become more connected, enabling faster response times. 

The same decentralization is happening with healthcare.

BOZEMAN, Mont., April 21, 2021 — Pulsara, the only mobile telehealth and communication platform that connects healthcare teams across organizations, announced today that the company has been honored as a finalist in the 2021 Excellence in Customer Service Awards presented by Business Intelligence Group.

“On the frontline of our uncertain times are customer service professionals and suppliers without whom we wouldn’t be able to live as comfortably as we have for the last year,” said Maria Jimenez, Chief Operating Officer of the Business Intelligence Group. “It is our honor to recognize Pulsara as they are leading by example and making real progress on improving the daily lives of so many.”

With the signing of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 on March 11th, CMS will now be allowed to reimburse ambulance services for treating patients in place during the public health emergency caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The measure comes in response to the widespread need for treatment-in-place caused by the pandemic. As hospitals reached capacity and it became clear that not every patient needed transport to the emergency room, many EMS agencies were directed to render services to patients in their homes, avoiding transport where possible. Traditionally, EMS has only been reimbursed for transporting patients to the hospital. 

Rob Lawrence, director of strategic implementation of PRO EMS and executive director of the California Ambulance Association, described the impact of the measure: "Specifically, this waiver would allow CMS to pay for ground ambulance services furnished in response to a 911 call (or equivalent in areas without 911) in cases where a patient was not transported but was instead treated in place in accordance with community-wide EMS protocols."

Breakdowns and bottlenecks in healthcare communication systems frequently cause a myriad of delays in patient care. Legacy systems like radios, pagers, fax machines, and multiple phone calls connect clinicians but aren't always able to efficiently get the right message to the right person at the right time. Combined with the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, it's clear that our current systems of communication need to be reimagined. Healthcare officials must begin to think differently. 

Your acute care, collaboration, and coordination solution needs to be scalable and flexible, enabling you to adapt quickly to the dynamic needs of patients and clinicians—and span across all organizations involved in patient care. By replacing legacy systems with one solution that covers the entire care continuum, health providers can achieve reduced treatment times, conserve resources, and improve the lives of both patients and caregivers.

When: The evening of April 27 in the USA; 11 AM on the 28th in New South Wales, Australia

Cost: FREE

Registration: Click here to register

Read on for further details!

A Canadian study published prior to the COVID-19 pandemic indicates that community paramedicine programs are improving care and outcomes for patients. 

According to researchers Michael J. Nolan, Katherine E. Nolan, and Samir K. Sinha, there is a growing need for a more flexible, sustainable model of care to deliver high-quality healthcare within communities—and in Canada, community paramedics are being recognized as uniquely positioned to deliver exactly that. 

Editor's Note: The following blog is based on the webinar Plug the Hole! Leveraging Telehealth to Stop System Leakage, sponsored by Pulsara in collaboration with Becker's Healthcare. Their complete list of top takeaways can be found here.

With many health systems still dealing with financial stress from the COVID-19 pandemic, it is more important than ever to ensure money and market share are not lost to competitors. One way to reduce unnecessary patient transfers and revenue leaving the organization is by using a telehealth and communication platform to connect facilities.

That's what Forrest Winslow, RN, BSED, NRP, Northeast Regional Sales Manager for Pulsara, discussed during a March 23 workshop at the Becker's Healthcare Telehealth Virtual Forum. 

View the full webinar below or read on for the top takeaways you won't want to miss.  

Two years ago my family experienced an unexpected medical event. Our mom had a heart attack at only 62. 

I missed a call at work and checked my voicemail. My mom’s best friend called to say that my mom was having a heart attack and that she had brought her to the hospital. 

My mom had initially visited a local Urgent Care because she thought she had something stuck in her throat. After examination, the clinician ordered an ECG and immediately said that something looked wrong and that she needed to get the emergency room right away.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article originally appeared on EMS1.com. Special thanks to our guest author, Tim Nowak, for EMS1 BrandFocus. 

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Delivering out-of-hospital care in rural and remote environments poses unique challenges, including distance, time to care, and other barriers to access

Being an EMS provider in a rural environment is different from serving in urban or suburban areas, but those differences are often what make it both challenging and rewarding. Operationally speaking, there are certainly some similarities between rural and urban environments, but there are also plenty of differences that make working in the woodlands, farmlands, deserts, and mountainous areas unique. In fact, these may be the very reasons that draw providers to serve in such an environment.

Pulsara is pleased to announce that The Tech Tribune selected us to appear in their top-ten list of the 2021 Best Tech Startups in Montana. According to The Tech Tribune, the featured companies were chosen based on the following criteria:

On February 19th, 2021, the European Stroke Organisation (ESO) published a new guideline on Intravenous Thrombolysis for acute ischaemic stroke. 

The new guideline comes from a study aimed at providing evidence-based recommendations to help physicians make clinical decisions regarding intravenous thrombolysis for acute ischaemic stroke. Published in the European Stroke Journal, the new guideline is the first in a series of around 10 that are expected to be published in 2021. 

The new guideline makes forty specific recommendations for stroke treatment. The authors of the study outlined the 8 they consider the most important, which are quoted as follows: 

With each new phase of the pandemic comes a new set of challenges, and each new need is significant. From COVID testing and new treatment protocols to contact tracing and mass vaccinations, we must concurrently address all these challenges before the nation can begin returning to a renewed sense of normalcy. Modernizing and mobilizing the tools our nation’s first responders – and those who support them – use is now imperative, as we combat the spread of COVID-19.

On Thursday, April 8, from 11:30 am - 12:30 pm MDT, join Pulsara's Vice President of National Accounts, Corey Ricketson, for the session "FirstNet: Tracing and Collaborative Care Coordination." In this session, Corey will discuss how Pulsara's healthcare communications platform is being used by emergency medical personnel to unite distributed teams, enable scalable networked communication, and coordinate patient movement across the continuum of patient care.

Click Here to Register for Free

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article originally appeared on EMS1.com. Special thanks to our guest author, Sarah Calams of EMS1 BrandFocus.

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In the past, the traditional way of thinking as a paramedic was often this: Get the patient in the rig and drive to the hospital as soon as possible to get the patient the care they need.

But what if the patient wasn’t being transported to the right facility?

Imagine: a paramedic recognizes on scene that they are treating a stroke victim. Their first thought is to get the patient to a hospital as quickly as possible. But what if the receiving hospital isn’t equipped or staffed appropriately to treat the patient?

Recently, Joey Branton, Pulsara's Senior Vice President of Strategic Initiatives, had the opportunity to sit down with Brian Zimmerman of the Becker’s Healthcare Podcast for a chat about "How Collaborative Mobile Communication Solutions are Transforming Healthcare Delivery." During the podcast, Joey and Brian discuss collaborative mobile communication solutions, as well as how these solutions can overlay existing healthcare tools and save hospitals money. 

Listen to the full podcast in the video below, or read on for their full discussion. 

When COVID-19 spread globally last March, New Zealand reacted quickly. In fact, their shut down was so effective that they were able to have a much shorter period of quarantine than most other countries. They quickly mobilized technology to help pivot and shift toward virtual appointments, utilizing telehealth to help manage patients’ needs.

Though brief, this period still has New Zealand experts looking to the future of health—a future which might just lie in the more strategic use of infrastructure and technology.

Wow! Was 2020 a doozie or what? COVID-19 took a toll on our healthcare system, resources, economy, and the way we do business. We survived rolling epicenters of virus surge on a national scale. Needless to say, it’s been a chaotic year. 

Imagine:

You arrive on the scene of a single-vehicle MVA with two passengers. The driver is a male in his 80s, and you can see that he requires immediate transport. However, he doesn't seem concerned about himself; instead, he keeps asking about his passenger—his wife, who has died. 

What do you tell him?

Ethics is a major consideration in other allied health professions, but the topic rarely receives much attention in EMS. And when it does, most tend to assume that the same ethical considerations that apply to physicians carry over into EMS. That's not always the case. While many of the same principles do apply, their application might look different for medics. Medics often face unique situations where time is short, options are limited, and consent unavailable. And now, in the midst of a pandemic, medics face many situations where tough decisions must be made with limited resources in short order.

A more full discussion of the differences in ethics for EMS may be found here, but there are ten ethical concepts medics need to be familiar with in order to make the best possible decisions while they're in the field. 

Here are the top 10 things you need to know about ethics in EMS.

Editor's Note: This article was originally published by EMS1 on March 8th, 2021. 

MCHD EMS shares lessons learned in flexibility and preparedness from the winter storm that doubled call volumes and sidelined hospitals in Texas

EMS agencies and first responders were tasked with shuffling from one crisis to another when Texans faced an unprecedented winter storm in the midst of a once-in-a-century pandemic with COVID-19. These challenges stress-tested all EMS agencies and first responders to continue providing life-saving care during the winter storm while adjusting to the changes of providing care, setting up mass vaccination sites, and continuing our mission during the COVID-19 pandemic.