Development and Strategic Planning in Healthcare

Consider the example of emergency medical services (EMS) strategic planning from your lesson in this unit and think about your own community. How do you see your local EMS organization or organizations working to provide higher quality and more comprehensive pre-hospital care for patients in the community? What does your local working relationship between hospitals, long-term care facilities, and EMS look like today? Discuss opportunities you see for improvement.

As you are responding to others, note any common goals you may have with your peers. Do any of your peers desire the same opportunities for improvement?

Please include the name of the person or question to which you are replying in the subject line. For example, “Tom’s response to Susan’s comment.”

ALSO PLEASE REPLY TO ANOTHER STUDENTS COMMENT BELOW 

TAD:

My department recently got a new medical director, to replace the doctor who was medical director from the beginning of the department in the late 80s. Our protocols had not been updated in many years, we still had procedures on the books that are not even included in the State’s scope of practice anymore. The new physician is also the head of Emergency Medicine at the level 1 trauma center that 90% of our patients get transported to. He is a younger, more proactive medical director. Within three months we had entirely new protocols, the department installed locking medication safes so we could carry Ketamine (and Morphine but that hasn’t happened yet). It was a very needed change that brought my department from the very basic EMS it was into at least a modern service of the 2000s. We also have tighter integration with the trauma center, we are offered training classes taught by their instructors at our facility. With all the advances my department has made in the last 5 years, one area where we still struggle is simply making radio contact with our local rural hospital. In the field, we struggle to make consistent contact with the nurses and physicians in the ER for patient reports and medical control direction. It usually takes several attempts by radio and a phone call from our dispatcher to make the initial contact. This is a very serious issue that my department just refuses to address. I do not know if it is our responsibility to ensure the radio equipment is working and staffed or if the hospital should manage that, but someone somewhere is dropping the ball. I understand that it may not be feasible for the hospital to employ a person to sit by the radio and do nothing else, it is a small rural hospital with minimal staff as it is, but maybe moving the radio to the reception desk could help. The desk is always staffed and these individuals could be trained to handle the radio traffic when needed.