Because the holiday season is in full swing, I was tempted to begin this blog post with one of my favorite Christmas clichés (think: a cheesy parody of The 12 Days of Christmas…) to tee up this Top listicle, until I read this article about how any writer with a modicum of self-respect should never, never, never use them in copy or headlines. So we’ll kick off with a much more traditional opening – however, I’m sticking with the number 12 just because I'm feeling festive and I think it sounds more holiday-like than 10 – to introduce the 12 hottest topics to EMS providers in 2017.
It turns out that four out of 12 of our most viewed blogs posts this year were on how to improve your patient care reports. What other topics resonated well with our audience? Here's our most popular content from 2017, which can be used as great resources to help polish off your 2018 plans:
One of the largest fire departments in the United States, the Los Angeles (LA) County Fire Department has 174 fire stations, 73 paramedic squads and many more paramedic assessment units. It services an area of 2,300 square miles that includes all unincorporated parts of LA County and 58 contract cities, all of the county’s beaches except Long Beach, and Catalina Island. It even includes air operations, with eight helicopters – three are in service at one time with a fourth in reserve. In 2016, LA County Fire Department’s call volume was approximately 350,000. Of those calls, 300 to 350 calls per month are for cardiac arrest. How could CPR performance and patient outcomes improve if the fire department started collecting and analyzing data on those calls?
Paint a Complete Patient Story to Eliminate Denied Claims
A good narrative clearly documents the patient’s response to the treatments provided. In other words, as a result of the treatment, did the patient’s condition improve, and if so, how? To a great extent, crews should see checkboxes and dropdown lists throughout their PCR as reminders of the various aspects of this patient’s care that need to be more fully developed and clearly documented in the narrative. Quality, not quantity should be the goal.
5. The Community Paramedicine Payment Evolution
6. 7 Essential Elements for a High-Quality Patient Care Report
As healthcare professionals, it’s our responsibility to ensure that our documentation of patient interaction is documented appropriately. What does that mean? Be sure to include these components for a complete narrative.
7. 6 Dashboards to Improve Clinical Outcomes
8. Keys to Better Billing Management
Actions in dispatch, the field and billing will improve operating efficiency and have a positive impact on cash flow. Follow these steps to improve operations and get paid for transports.
9. Building an Efficient, Yet Lean EMS System
Last May, ZOLL recognized several professionals for being the pulse of their organization by providing better care and enabling their teams to save more lives within their community. Alexander Lewinsky has been instrumental in growing JFK EMS and has tirelessly worked to improve the agency’s systems.
10. Documentation Compliance in the Real World
11. How Florida Hospital Closed the Divide Between Air & Ground EMS
Despite making strides to change our culture, we had several minor accidents, speeding tickets and red light violations. We even had fairly serious accident that was fortunately without fatalities where an SUV T-boned one of our ambulances with a patient on board in an intersection. Several other events caused us to pause in order to determine what was missing. We realized what we didn’t have was real-time data that could paint a picture of how our crews were actually behaving on the road. We did our homework, and identified Road Safety as the missing link in our culture of safety program. When we saw the data from Road Safety, I was absolutely shocked at the number of violations that were occurring as our crews were on the road.
12. Bloomington Hospital EMS Tried a Competitor of Road Safety for 1 Year; Find Out What Happened