Pulsara Blog

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.

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.

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!

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

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.

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

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.

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

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. 

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.

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. 

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?

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?

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.

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. 

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.)

EDITOR'S UPDATE: The ET3 program is mentioned in 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.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Special thanks to our guest blogger this week, Ben Thompson.**