Pulsara Blog

Longview Regional Medical Center (LRMC) has long had a well-designed and fully functioning process for identifying and rapidly treating STEMI patients. The hospital was meeting its goal of keeping door-to-reperfusion times under 60 minutes; as a result, patient outcomes were generally very good. Despite their satisfactory performance, the teams at LRMC believed they could reduce their treatment times even further to improve patient outcomes.

Right before shelter-in-place struck, my husband and I started remodeling our kitchen. It’s a relatively small kitchen, and we have done the majority of the work ourselves. Because of this, the number of people needed to complete the job was significantly smaller than if we had hired a contractor.

However, over the last few months I have grown increasingly frustrated by trying to coordinate communication between the small number of individuals required to finish the job! Between window installers, countertop installers, and tile installers, I have been making tons of phone calls trying to keep the ball rolling and ensuring everyone is lined up appropriately. It’s a lot of work keeping track of everyone, and it takes up a ton of time just to make sure everything will run like it’s supposed to.

You may be wondering how this relates to time-sensitive emergencies. Kitchen remodels are the polar opposite of time-sensitive emergencies in most ways — after all, they’re not at all life threatening or serious. But as I began to realize, they can be equally as frustrating in the coordination and communication department.

Privacy, Safety, and How Telehealth Technology Could Be the Answer

COVID-19 causes tension between pandemic mitigation measures and patient privacy

One of the most pressing questions to come out of the COVID-19 pandemic is the issue of patient privacy. The latest of many questions about patient privacy involves who has the right to know who has the virus, and when—specifically, EMS and first responders.

A few weeks ago, NPR reported on what’s becoming a national debate: whether or not first responders should be told when a call that is not about a potential case of COVID-19 occurs in a home that has one.

Pulsara partnered with the Center for Patient Safety to discuss how to improve communication during time-sensitive emergencies at EMS Today 2020

When it comes to ensuring patient safety and positive outcomes in emergency care, one factor almost always plays a role: communication. At EMS Today in Tampa Bay, Florida, Kris Kaull, Pulsara’s Chief Marketing Officer, joined Brian LaCroix, EMS coordinator for the Center for Patient Safety and President of the National EMS Management Association, to discuss how communication plays a vital role and what causes communication breakdowns in healthcare settings.

Saint Mary’s Regional Health System is a Joint-Commission-accredited Level III Trauma Center, located in Russellville, Arkansas. The 170-bed hospital has delivered care to the River Valley community for the past 90 years, and alongside Pope County EMS since 1967.

Saint Mary’s and Pope County EMS have a long-standing relationship built on a shared value of putting patients first. As the only hospital and EMS agency serving their region, they together perform emergency response for 28,000 patients annually.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how we strive to improve the lives of ED Nurses and the patients they serve. This week, I want to focus on ED Doctors (did you know Pulsara was founded by one?). In this post, my aim is to help ED Doctors understand how a communication platform like Pulsara can make their lives better.

When our care teams are all on the same page, communication is seamless, and treatment times are reduced, ultimately improving quality of care. How you can leverage the Pulsara communication platform to connect your care teams—whether in your organization or dispersed across many organizations?

In my opinion, if there is any group in the hospital who doesn't get the love they deserve, it's the ED Nurses. ED Nurses are the front door of the hospital, but too often, they are treated as the doormat. When people are sick and hurting, they take it out on the people in front of them (as long as they aren't wearing a white coat). The ED nurse is the person who takes what comes at them and still provides the highest level of care and compassion for the patient. ED nurse, you are the first line of defense, and here at Pulsara, we salute you. Here are five areas where we're doing our best to help make your job a little easier and ultimately, improve your life and the lives of those you serve:

As the largest healthcare payers in the U.S., the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) are holding hospitals more and more accountable for the level of quality care provided. These hospital quality initiatives can impact your bottom line.

Whether your hospital is participating in a pay-for-reporting or pay-for-performance program, having an effective communication platform can help you reach your quality goals, particularly with time-sensitive care and procedures.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 11, 2019

PRESS CONTACT
Hannah Ostrem
Hannah.Ostrem@pulsara.com
(877) 903-5642

The feature is the first of its kind to give first responders a dedicated platform to communicate with other out-of-hospital care providers and hospitals in real time.

Bozeman, Mont. — Pulsara is excited to announce that the company has been selected as a Finalist by a 4-person judging panel for the 2019 EMS World Expo Innovation Award.

 Pulsara connects care teams across organizations and their latest innovative feature to be nominated for the award is their new EMS handoff feature. Whereas EMS providers have historically had workflows to hand off patients to hospital teams in Pulsara, First Responders now have the ability to start a case and hand off the patient to an EMS crew.

Last summer, I had the opportunity to take an EMT class and subsequently obtain my license from the state of Montana. Not knowing exactly what I wanted to do with my new licensure, I thought back to my roots — growing up in Montana and skiing my whole life, Ski Patrol had always appealed to me. Being outdoors while getting to serve would be a dream come true — not to mention, first and last tracks on one of the most amazing ski mountains in the world!

According to a recent article in the Longview, Texas based Longview News Journal, "At least 17 times in a three-month period starting in May, Longview police officers transported a person experiencing a mental health episode to a hospital ER." This practice costs patients a lot of money, and costs first responders significant time since they often end up waiting in the ER while the patient is seen by a physician and then referred to a mental health clinic -- in Texas, patients must get clearance from a physician via face-to-face interaction, before they can enter a mental health crisis center. 

To help ease these time and resource burdens placed on emergency and law enforcement services in the area, a group of "at least 16 governmental, health, and social agencies" have teamed up to form the Gregg County Collaborative Wellness Center.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Alyana Samai is the Director of Stroke Services at West Jefferson Medical Center in Marrero, Louisiana. Aly has been a champion user of Pulsara since 2016, and has led her teams to successfully decrease door to needle times by streamlining and improving communication when it matters most. 

Dear Aly,

We are new clients and implementing Pulsara at our facility, but many of our nurses are concerned that this is going to be "double documentation," more than communication. How can we help them understand that Pulsara can streamline the process, reduce communication frustrations, and not double up on tasks?

Sincerely, 
Prepared for Pulsara

Simply being able to get the right message to the right care team members in the right amount of time can be an incredibly convoluted process in today's healthcare world. Worse, the lack of a reliable system of communication causes hundreds of thousands of medical errors every year.

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

If you’re an old-school paramedic like me, you remember when you finally upgraded to the Medcom system after an already overloaded single channel/multi-hospital HEAR network. When transmitting patient information to the hospital, I always asked myself, "Did I portray a good enough picture of the severity of the patient and nature of the problem using voice-only communications? Will the staff taking the report be able to remember what was said? What information did they actually write down and forward to the rest of the team?"

Oftentimes, it felt like my radio report was lost or stopped with the wrong person – so we’d have to delay patient transfer — and ultimately patient care — so we could repeat it again upon arrival and as other team members arrived. I often thought to myself, “There’s got to be a better way.”

EDITOR'S NOTE: A few months ago, a Pulsara client reached out with a question which we then consulted one of our other rock star clients about! Dave Edgar is Assistant Chief at the City of West Des Moines EMS, and is a champion Pulsara user. In addition, his expertise in EMS and hospital relations makes him a fantastic consultant for questions related to integrating teams and breaking down silos. We hope you enjoy this first "Dear Dave" post!

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"Dear Dave - We want to increase utilization of Pulsara in our region but are having challenges getting some of the hospitals to participate. What are your recommendations for getting our local hospitals more engaged?"

EDITOR'S NOTE: Special thanks to today's guest blogger, Reid Kiser* 

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It’s probably safe to say that we have all established goals – for ourselves or others – at some point in our lives. In follow-up to last week’s blog, I’d like to focus on goals related to improving the quality of healthcare. This has been a major focus for the industry over the past few decades. And most recently, the concept of value-based healthcare has taken root, whereby organizations are increasingly mindful of inefficiencies and waste.

But, where does one begin with establishing goals for improving quality? How does one know where efficiencies can be gained? Wait, there’s waste in our healthcare system? It’s hard to believe, considering the numbers of patients who can’t obtain the care they need to begin with.