Stakeholders representing multiple facets of EMS, as well as safety experts from other fields, will gather near Washington, D.C., from June 27–28 to offer their expertise and suggestions for a national strategy to improve safety for EMS providers, patients and bystanders.
The initiative is part of a 36-month cooperative agreement between the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), with support from the Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA) EMS for Children (EMSC) Program, and the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP). It stems from a recommendation by the National EMS Advisory Council
(NEMSAC), a group created in 2007 to provide guidance to the U.S. Department of Transportation and the NHTSA Office of EMS.
“Safety emerged as a critical issue in almost all the areas that NEMSAC examined, from patient safety to responder safety to vehicle operations to wellness and more,” NEMSAC chair Dia Gainor said in a news release. “It’s a huge problem. As a first step, we decided to address the foundation on which all other safety efforts will be built—the ‘culture of safety’ in EMS.”
The group will meet again next year to review the results. The final recommendations from the steering committee—made up of representatives from national EMS and fire organizations—will be sent to NEMSAC for review and will be submitted in September 2013.
The meeting is free, and anyone with an interest in the topic is encouraged to attend. Pre-registration is required. For more information, visit emscos.org
Twenty Responders Do CPR for 96 Minutes … with a Save
On a frigid evening in Goodhue, Minn., population 778, Howard Snitzer, a 54-year-old chef, collapsed outside a grocery store in sudden cardiac arrest. A customer witnessed Snitzer fall and ran to get brothers Al and Roy Lodermeier, volunteer firefighters and first responders for some 35 years, who were working at their auto repair shop across the street.
The Lodermeiers pulled Snitzer’s body back into the store. Al immediately started chest compressions while Roy ran next door to the volunteer firehouse to get an AED, a bag-valve mask and oxygen.
Another bystander called 911. Dispatchers sent an EMT crew from Zumbrota Area Ambulance in nearby Zumbrota, Minn.; paramedics from Red Wing ambulance service in Red Wing, Minn., about 15 miles away; and an emergency medical helicopter from Mayo One, about 35 miles away in Rochester, Minn. At the same time, word started to spread about the incident among the community’s other firefighters and first responders, who began arriving on scene to help.
For the next hour and a half, about 20 volunteers and professional responders took turns doing shocks and chest compressions, including while they slid Snitzer onto a gurney and wheeled him over to the fire station where the helicopter could land.
Then, 96 minutes after his collapse, and just as they were about to give up, the 11th shock did the trick. Snitzer’s pulse normalized.
“This guy was as lucky as you could ever get,” Al Lodermeier says. “Five or 10 minutes later we would have been closed, and there wouldn’t have been anybody else who could have gotten there that fast.”
At St. Mary’s Hospital in Rochester, doctors treated Snitzer with a stent to open a blocked artery. He went home without significant neurological problems, Al Lodermeier says, and the chef has thanked his rescuers with home-cooked meals.
Although Al Lodermeier had administered CPR before, this was the first time a patient survived for long. “We might send them to the hospital with a pulse, and they might live for a few days or a week, but generally they don’t come back,” he says. “This is the first time we had anybody who lived with hardly any side effects. That was really amazing.”
Pennsylvania EMS Service Creates In-house Wellness Program
Christopher Dell, chief of Elizabeth Township Area EMS outside Pittsburgh, knew he needed to take action to improve his employees’ health. “We were seeing expanding waistlines and excessive amounts of call offs,” he says.
While shopping for a new health insurance plan, one insurer denied the agency coverage after reviewing its health assessment forms. Eventually, the agency accepted a hefty increase in premiums from another carrier, a portion of which was passed on to employees for the first time. “We had previously covered the entire cost, but we could not absorb it this time,” Dell says of his self-supporting, nonprofit agency that serves five communities and has 25 full-time and five part-time employees.
So Dell worked with his local fitness center, a rep from his workers’ compensation carrier and fellow employees to form a health and wellness committee to develop an incentive-based wellness plan. They rolled it out in December 2010, just in time to “capture everybody’s New Year’s resolutions,” Dell says.
About 20 employees opted to participate. Each received a one-time fitness assessment, including body mass index and a timed mile by a personal trainer, who then helped set goals for improvement.
The local fitness center already offered a $25/month discounted rate to public safety officers. EMS employees who go to the gym eight times a month for four consecutive months can get their gym fees reimbursed. Participating employees can also get their portion of the medical insurance premium reimbursed, or about $300 for a family annually.
Dell and his team also came up with a reward program. Employees can earn points for participating in other fitness activities, such as charity runs or walks, or attending lunchtime health and nutrition talks, held at the station. Those points can be redeemed for prizes such as T-shirts and gift cards.
They made other changes, too. They served healthier food at staff meetings—out went pizza and subs, in came salads and grilled chicken. They swapped out some of the unhealthiest food in their vending machines for lower-calorie fare. They keep a bowl of fresh fruit available and put in a water cooler to encourage less soda drinking. “It’s fun to watch them walk around eating carrots and apples, when we used to see them eating donuts,” Dell says. “And we go through a lot of water.”
Dell figures the cost of the program is less than $500 a month. He believes that over time, that will more than come back to them in lower health insurance costs, fewer injuries and fewer missed days of work.
“We know they are eating healthier and losing weight,” he says. “We believe it’s definitely a program that’s working, and it’s been a very small investment.”
Soon, he plans to offer the program to spouses and families. “We want to show our commitment to the whole family,” Dell says. “And the bottom line from a financial perspective is they are all on our health insurance.” To learn more about the program, contact Chris Dell at cdell@etaems.org.
Falck Acquires LifeStar Ambulance
Falck, the largest private ambulance company in Europe, has finalized the acquisition of LifeStar, a New Jersey-based EMS provider operating in New York; New Jersey; Maryland; Pennsylvania; Washington, D.C.; Alabama; Florida; and Georgia.
In October 2010, Falck announced plans to acquire LifeStar, which does business as LifeStar Response and Care Ambulance. Falck, which is based in Copenhagen, operates ambulances in 14 countries in Europe and Latin America, including Brazil, Norway, Romania, Spain and Venezuela. The company website says Falck is also the world’s largest private firefighting service.
This isn’t Falck’s first U.S. purchase. In late 2010, the company bought Care Ambulance in Orange, Calif.
The acquisition of LifeStar makes Falck the third largest private ambulance service in the U.S., according to a company news release. “Based on our century long experience in the European emergency medical services market, it is our ambition to further help developing the quality of the emergency medical services in the U.S.,” said Falck CEO Allan Søgaard Larsen.
