New toolkits available for Wisconsin ambulance services

Contain Best Practices for Time-Critical Diagnoses (Stroke, Trauma, Heart Attack)

For Immediate Release Wednesday, November 28, 2018 (Madison, Wisconsin) — The Wisconsin Office of Rural Health (WI-ORH) now has new policy and procedure guides for use by Wisconsin EMS agencies.  The guides focus on best practices for responding to patients with time-critical diagnoses—specifically, stroke, trauma, and heart attack.

The guides are the result of a 2016 assessment by our office of all ambulance services in Wisconsin— from rural to urban—that asked about patient care policies and practices for time critical diagnoses patients (i.e. those suffering from heart attack, stroke, or trauma). The goal of the assessment was to provide examples for agencies of what a high-capacity EMS service’s policy might look like regarding patient care.

“Our goal was to provide Wisconsin ambulance services with the means to self-assess their own policies and procedures in order to improve their service,” says Kevin Jacobson, Rural Communities Initiatives Program Manager at WI-ORH.

The four guides, focusing on policies for ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), stroke, trauma, and cardiac arrest, are available at http://worh.org/library/best-practices-ems-time-critical-diagnoses.

Another EMS assessment is planned for 2019. For more information, contact Rural Communities Initiatives Program Manager Kevin Jacobson at 608- 261-1888 or kmjacobson2@wisc.edu.

The Wisconsin Office of Rural Health works to improve the access to, and quality of, rural health care.