FALLS CHURCH, Va. — The EMS Compass initiative released its first set of EMS performance measures, which address EMS assessment, treatment and transport of stroke patients.
“EMS can make a significant difference in the outcomes of patients having strokes,” said David Williams, PhD, chair of the measurement design group. “These evidence-based performance measures will help ensure that EMS systems are providing the best possible care to their patients.”
The EMS Compass initiative seeks to develop national performance measures for EMS systems so they can use their data to evaluate and improve the care and service.
EMS agencies are encouraged to evaluate these measures using actual patient records and to provide feedback to EMS Compass on their ability to find the data, calculate the measures and interpret the results.
“We hope these are just the first of many performance measures that EMS Compass designs and tests in order to help create a culture of measurement and improvement in the EMS profession,” said Bob Bass, MD, chair, steering committee.
EMS Compass will continue to release performance measures for comment throughout the next several months. The public testing and comment period for the first set of measures closes on August 26.
Sign up to receive updates at emscompass.org. Specific questions about how to test the measures should be sent to EMS Compass Project Manager Nick Nudell at nick@nasemso.org.