¶ … Performance Measures for (50,000 call per year) EMS
EMS ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT
That the organization implements additional clinical performance measures, including those to evaluate the quality of the EMS.
That the organization uses survey data to evaluate and analyze customer and employee satisfaction and that a proper feedback and control mechanism is in place to use this data to implement required changes.
This report starts from the premise that Emergency Medical Services will be treated as any other service. As a consequence, this type of service reflects the relationship between the service recipient (in this case the patients) and the service provider (in this case the medium-sized organization being analyzed in this report).
This means that this report will use many of the existing research and business literature and apply business principles such as customer and employee satisfaction in presenting and analyzing a comprehensive set of recommended performance measures for a medium-sized (50,000 call per year) emergency medical service organization.
Operational performance measures
The Littleton Fire Rescue service has been providing citizens emergency medical services for decades. However, the performance of their EMS was not measures and its influence on patient outcome could not be determined. The Littleton Fire Rescue department then developed an applied research process intended to identify key performance indicators that could be used in measuring the department's performance (Zygowicz, 2010).
The operational segment was of particular interest to researchers in this case, as operational performance measures have been identified in order to improve EMS system efficiency and to improve customer service. These measures can be successfully benchmarked by our EMS organization.
One of the measures proposed by the study refers to monitoring individual paramedic performance and giving feedback to crew members. This measure is intended to personalize recommendations for each crew members, which increases their efficiency.
Another important measure in the operational segment is to determine the number of tracheal intubations performed by the staff. If the reported number is lower in comparison with the state average number of tracheal intubations, training programs must be acquired for the organization's personnel (Zygowitz, 2010).
Measures that should be benchmarked by the organization refer to its communication center or dispatch, light and siren response, and primary EMS complaints. Collecting and analyzing data on patient satisfaction is probably the areas that can provide important information to be used in developing measures that improve satisfaction. However, it is worth mentioning that patent satisfaction surveys have their level of subjectivity. Patients' responses in such surveys should be measured against more objective indicators in order to build an accurate image of the service's performance. In order to facilitate the implementation of these surveys, they can be sent to patients together with their transportation bills.
It is recommended that the organization posts on its websites information about performance measures it takes and their indicators. By publishing such results, the organization ensures the transparency of its activity (Zygowitz, 2010).
Clinical performance measures
Myers, Slovis et al. (2007) have conducted a significant amount of research regarding the measures of clinical performance. It is useful to start this subchapter with a brief analysis of some of the measures they have identified and employed in their research. Their study starts with some of the traditional performance measures. One of the most important in this category is the response time intervals.
There are several advantages with regards to the response time intervals. First of all, they are easy to quantify and this is usually very helpful in the dialogue that medical centers have with external shareholders, such as the public and the central administration. Being able to quantify a clinical performance measure will objectively reflect how well such a center is doing.
Benchmarking response times remains a challenge because, as the medical science evolved, more individuals could perform some of the basic resuscitation measures such as advanced life support (ALS) or cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). The latter is now receiving less attention as part of the measuring process and the ALS response-time interval tends to be the norm in clinical performance measurement. It shows how soon it takes the responders to arrive and perform ALS.
The average response time is already in use in this organization. The only problem is that this is the only performance measure that the organization uses. However, it is a useful measure in regulating the organization's human resources, particularly...
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