By Dr. Shana Nicholson and Joseph Heaton
InPublicSafety.com
As emergency medical services (EMS) managers, quality assurance (QA) can be a struggle when it comes to guiding our staff. It is imperative that we ensure staff is not only treating patients appropriately, but that we document this care within the appropriate guidelines and medical protocols. However, as we know, this effort can be a struggle.
Many times when we discuss the QA process of medical care review with emergency medical providers, the initial response is to become defensive or aggravated. Historically, the QA system has been used as a weapon in a sort of blame game for problems with a call. EMS providers have been judged by peers and medical directors as lacking in professionalism, skills, and providing bad patient care on an opinion-based system. However, there has been a shift in federal patient care guidelines toward the Quality Improvement (QI) method of review.
Medical professionals are transitioning to a QI for peer review of patient care records. The QI process of chart review looks for performance deficits over multiple care scenarios. The QI process sees a standardized level of care and utilizes a fair approach to evaluating the needs of the agency’s emergency providers. The QI process allows for self-reporting and sampling of run sheets. Data capture focuses on multiple areas of the run report for sampling as well. As the patient care sheets are evaluated, learning opportunities for the providers are identified as areas of improvement.
Read full story: Moving from a QA to QI Program Helps EMS Managers Focus on Improvement, Not Blame
