Pulsara Blog

Pulsara recently partnered with Rea Berg, Virginia Mason Medical Center's Director of the Emergency Department/Observation Unit to present some of the successes the hospital has seen in their treatment times following some process improvements they made. The full webinar can be seen right here. 

Following the webinar, Becker's Healthcare Review wrote up the following article about the presentation. The following is authored by Anuja Vaidya, and originally appeared here. 

One of the biggest contributors to inefficiency in healthcare is a lack of communication, which can lead to lower quality of care and higher costs. Communication in healthcare is siloed for many reasons, including the complexity of the work, the size of health systems, outdated and non-integrated communication technologies, and HIPAA constraints.

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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.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 9, 2019

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

The adoption by Pulsara of the NEMSIS format further strengthens its role as the leading regional healthcare communication platform.

BOZEMAN, Mont. — Pulsara announced today that the healthcare communication platform is the first to adopt the NEMSIS prehospital format to connect regional systems of care.

The purpose behind the National Emergency Medical Services Information System (NEMSIS) is to enhance patient care by storing EMS data from local, state, and national sources. The NEMSIS database allows EMS providers to share, collect, standardize, and use this data to analyze their systems and make process improvements.

Through a standardized API, Pulsara’s platform now allows all ePCR partners to access Pulsara data in near real time. Importing Pulsara data via this new API using the NEMSIS 3.4 format eliminates dual data entry by medics and improves communication to all care providers, ultimately enhancing patient care.

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Combination of Pulsara and RAPID expands window of opportunity for treatment 

BOZEMAN, MT – September 27, 2019 – Miami Valley Hospital is the first site in the world to use the combination of a specific software application and mobile platform to enhance the treatment used to preserve a patient’s neurological function after a stroke.

While many hospitals use both applications – Pulsara and RAPID – in their stroke care, none have taken the step to combine their capabilities into one, said John Terry, MD, director of inpatient stroke care at Miami Valley Hospital.

Pulsara, a mobile platform, was developed by physicians to improve coordination and communication essential for stroke patient assessment. RAPID is a global leader in advanced imaging.

When I was fresh out of Paramedic school, STEMI and stroke patients were something we couldn’t do much about except monitor and transport. To be honest, we hadn’t even started using the term "STEMI," and we were years away from giving aspirin. Patients who survived to get discharged out of the CCU or ICU (there were no stroke units then) went on to rehab or an extended care facility with a shoebox full of meds. They were armed with lots of Digitalis and Lasix, but not much hope.

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.

BACKGROUND

Virginia Mason Medical Center is a nonprofit health care system based in King County, Seattle, serving the central Puget Sound region and Yakima area.

PROBLEM

Focused on continually delivering the highest quality of care to patients, care teams at Virginia Mason Medical Center wanted to innovate the way they communicated with one another to better respond to time-sensitive stroke cases.

I've been asked why Pulsara started building a Regional Communication Network for Time Sensitive Emergencies. Here is one of the many reasons...

Misdiagnosis-related harms (death and disability) are concentrated in Vascular Events, Infections, and Cancers. The numbers in this study are staggering, but keep in mind that malpractice claims only represent 1.5% of actual events, and it is estimated that total societal costs are more than $100 billion annually.

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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As the scope of practice for first responders expands and they become increasingly empowered to treat patients within the community, incentives like the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)'s Emergency Triage, Treat, and Transport (ET3) model have emerged.

How does the Emergency Triage, Treat, and Transport Model (ET3) work?

According to the CMS, "Currently, Medicare regulations only allow payment for emergency ground ambulance services when individuals are transported to hospitals, critical access hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, and dialysis centers." As a result, most patients who call 911 are therefore transported to one of these destinations, even when their conditions could be treated at home or another non-emergency care facility. This is where ET3 comes in. 

The Montgomery County Hospital District EMS experience paired a novel stroke assessment endovascular pathway with specialized training.

What problem does Pulsara solve?

Have you ever played the game of Telephone, where one person whispers a message to another, who then whispers to the next person in the line, and so on until the final person repeats back what she heard? The final message is almost always radically different from the original information as miscommunications cause breakdowns in understanding.

As healthcare professionals, we have a powerful opportunity to change things for the better. To improve the lives of patients and the healthcare system as a whole - by demanding better processes and changes to protocols that simply don't work. And, to improve quality in healthcare delivery.

Healthcare is burdened by the archaic means of communication. And everyone — from EMS to critical care teams to the discharge teams at the hospital — is feeling the effects. Luckily, hospital and EMS providers no longer need to be stuck in the dark ages of communication. Technology companies like Pulsara and Acuity Link work to streamline the most frustrating and broken parts of the patient care and communication processes from first medical transport through patient discharge.

Acuity Link’s CEO and co-founder, Alex Theoharidis purpose-built the company as a means to address mounting inefficiencies in the medical transportation request process. Today he shares his perspectives around what is needed to streamline non-emergency medical transport (NEMT) logistics in order to improve patient flow, and how solutions like Acuity Link work to elevate a customer’s patient transfer process – and ultimately the entire patient experience.

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 our guest blogger, Reid Kiser, Founder, President, and CEO of Kiser Healthcare Solutions. Reid is an innovative leader who has served in a variety of capacities with healthcare organizations over the past 20 years addressing healthcare quality, performance measurement, data analytics and reporting, and business systems design. He currently provides strategic consulting services and subject matter expertise through client engagements and multi-stakeholder panels focused on improving healthcare quality. He can be reached at rrkiser@kisersolutions.com.

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Quality is a critical piece of the health care equation. To date, so much focus (and rightfully so) has been placed on prevention and management of chronic conditions, and more recently, overuse and inappropriate use. After all, these contribute to a significant chunk of our industry’s healthcare costs. But what about all of the inefficiencies and waste our systems generate when it comes to provider communications and care delivery? It's hard for most people who don't work in healthcare to get over the fact that fax machines still hold a place on countertops at our medical facilities. And providers still wear beepers on the belt loop? Clutter is a term that comes to mind, thanks to my wife’s teachings.

When it comes to healthcare, we track a lot of metrics. We know how many beds the hospital has and the number of annual ED visits. But there's one area that is still uncharted territory: just ask anyone in the hospital how many teams they have. I promise you will hear crickets.

At Pulsara, our focus is on real time TEAM communication that crosses healthcare entities. Okay, but which teams exactly are we referring to? While the answer is essentially endless (Pulsara can be used for ANY patient, ANY condition, ANY EMS or Hospital team member), here are 10 teams that immediately jump to mind when asked what our customers use Pulsara for.