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.