IRVING, Texas — The National EMS Quality Alliance released its 2025 Annual EMS Measures Report, drawing on data from the National EMS Information System, reporting that trauma survival is driven more by consistent execution of routine care than by rare, high-acuity procedures.
The report notes that interventions such as needle decompression occur in just 0.07% of EMS cases, while more common practices, including preventing hypoxia in traumatic brain injury patients and issuing timely trauma alerts, play a larger role in everyday outcomes, NEMSQA said in a statement.
| SHARE YOUR STORY: A call for real stories from the EMS field, station and beyond
“HALO interventions remain essential, but what changes survival for most trauma patients is consistency in the basics,” Measure Analysis and Research Committee Co-Chair Maia Dorsett said. “They may lack drama, but they are what save lives.”
The report also describes NEMSQA’s approach to so-called “topped-out” measures, aiming to ensure that strong national averages do not obscure care gaps for specific populations. It emphasizes that standardized measurement is needed to move EMS improvement from anecdote-driven efforts to evidence-based system change.
This year’s report includes four National EMS Quality Alliance measures focused on trauma and traumatic brain injury assessment, along with system measures addressing triage, transport to trauma centers and pre-arrival trauma notifications. Using the 2024 national dataset submitted through the National EMS Information System, the report also tracks how often high-acuity, low-occurrence interventions are performed and emphasizes that trauma outcomes depend more on consistent delivery of core care than on rare procedures.
2025 NEMSQA Annual Measures Report- Measuring What Matters in Prehospital Trauma by Lexipol_Media_Group
