Highlighting the success of the Colonie EMS, Dr. Michael Dailey gave a speech at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions in Chicago on Nov. 13 to discuss the improved survival rates in survival following out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients.
Dailey, associate professor of emergency medicine at Albany Medical College and medical director for Colonie EMS, said that what has contributed to the success of their program is the EMS’ ability to look at the statistics and improve off of them.
Since the development of Colonie EMS, they have taken a system-wide approach, watched statistics and looked at the quality of improvements every month, he said, adding that this type of success can be present in any municipal’s EMS department.
One of the biggest changes the department made was sending out an ambulance regardless of what type of situation it is instead of putting out a call to location and waiting to hear the priority of the response.
`It gets units moving in the right direction as soon as possible,` he said. `It allows you to start moving the trucks and moving towards the location and saving time. That minute means a lot.`
The team went from a four percent survival rate in 2005 to a 22 percent in 2009. Dailey said what contributed to that was a competent managing team, which included then Colonie EMS Chief Jon Politis and Deputy Chief Peter Barry who read the literature necessary and would review their process to improve quality.
`A group of professionals and EMT’s willing to try new thing and that are willing to work in new ways for the success of their patients,` he said. `And building a relationship with dispatch, police and the fire department to ensure we have a prompt recognition and prompt first response.`
To spread their success, Dailey believes Colonie EMS must show other municipalities how to experience the same success it has in the past five years.
`I think all we can really do is demonstrate our success on a director level and work with other agencies’ management team to work with other development systems of care,` he said, adding that New York State law has made it difficult for towns to make these improvements. `Part of the problem is part of the Article 30 Public Health Law makes it difficult to develop systems that allow EMS care.`
He added that each town has their own way of performing CPR, and that it is hard to make immediate and drastic changes.
`We’ve got people that have been doing CPR for one way for 20 years, and you can’t change it right away,` he said. `They have to be little changes over time.`
Dailey stresses that every citizen should learn how to do CPR to create a safer environment.
The inevitability of losing a patient is something that must be kept in the minds of EMT’s, Dailey said, but at least act as if there is a chance the person will live.
When transporting a patient to the hospital, he said Colonie EMS will take the CPR device to the patients side and will transport after they are able to get a pulse back, adding that EMT’s must act as though the incident will not turn into a terminal event
`You can’t lose sight of the fact that some people will die,` he said, `but some people that have the potential to continue to leave and have meaningful live, we wanted to make sure they have as meaningful a life as possible.“
