PLEASE MARK YOUR CALENDARS FOR OUR NEXT ALL GRANTEE MEETING!

Dates: August 20-23, 2019

Location: Crystal City Hilton

Register for the conference and reserve your room by clicking here. 

Conference Highlights:

• Poster Session and Reception
• Opportunity to interact with all colleagues across the EMSC Spectrum:

• PECARN

• Targeted Issues Grantees

• SPROC Grantees

• State Partnership Program Staff

• PRQC Trainers

• Family Advisory Network members

• EIIC Staff

• NEDARC Staff

• HRSA Staff

We anticipate this will be a very interesting and engaging conference so make sure you reserve the time!

To view the invitation letter from HRSA and the agenda, click here... 

National EMS Week 2019 is May 19 thru May 25, and Wednesday, May 22, is set aside for National Emergency Medical Services for Children day. National EMS for Children Day places a spotlight on the delivery of high-quality emergency medical care for children, focusing on the unique needs of critically ill or injured pediatric patients and the challenges faced by EMS professionals in meeting those needs. 

EMS Week, and specifically EMS for Children Day is a time to honor those who take care of our children in an emergency. As the EMS for Children Program is celebrating its 35^th anniversary this year, we would like to thank the federal and national organizations, as well as the thousands of health care professionals – EMTs, paramedics, nurses and physicians – who for the last 35 years have worked with the Program to improve the care provided to children in the emergency setting!

Please visit the American College of Emergency Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the EMS for Children Innovation and Improvement Center’s websites for more information and resources as they become available. 

Theme Days for 2019

•      Monday - Education
•      Tuesday - Safety Tuesday
•      Wednesday - EMSC Day
•      Thursday - Save-A-Life (CPR and Stop the Bleed) "National Stop the Bleed"
•      Friday - EMS Recognition Day

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services Innovation Center (CMMI) was established as part of the Affordable Care Act to test models that “improve care, lower costs, and better align payment systems to support patient-centered practices.” The CMMI Integrated Care for Kids (InCK) model is CMMI’s first completely child-focused model developed to advance health payment and delivery system reform to improve health quality, population health, and achieve health cost savings. The detailed federal application announcement (the Notice of Funding Opportunity/NOFO) was released February 8th, and completed applications are due by June 10, 2019. The NOFO is here.

The Integrated Care for Kids (InCK) Model will test whether combining a local service delivery model coordinating integrated child health services and a state-specific alternative payment model (APM) to support coordination of those integrated services reduces health care expenditures and improves the quality of care for pediatric Medicaid and CHIP beneficiaries

Additional information is available here. 

The Emergency Medical Services for Children (EMSC) program has released the Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for the Targeted Issues grant program (Targeted Issues NOFO).  This program will provide funding for investigator-initiated research projects to demonstrate the link between system readiness improvements within hospital and prehospital emergency medical systems and improved clinical care and better health outcomes among pediatric patients.  There will be 4 grants awarded at $325,000 a year for 4 years. There are two categories of awards:

•        Readiness of Emergency Departments (EDs) to Care for Children. These projects will focus on how adoption of these AAP-ACEP- ENA ED guidelines is associated with changes in the quality of pediatric clinical care and improved health outcomes.
  
•       System Readiness Improvements in EMSC Performance Measures. The projects will demonstrate the impact on delivery of optimal clinical care and improved pediatric health outcomes specific to two EMSC Performance Measures: 

o   Pediatric Emergency Care Coordination in Pre-Hospital Settings (EMSC Performance Measure 02): The presence of a designated individual or combination of individuals responsible for key coordination roles focused on improving pediatric care within a local EMS agency. 

o   Hospital Recognition for Pediatric Medical Emergencies (EMSC Performance Measure 04): Hospitals with an ED that are recognized through a statewide, territorial, or regional standardized program as able to stabilize and/or manage pediatric medical emergencies.

The NOFO is available to download from: https://mchb.hrsa.gov/fundingopportunities/?id=31632f4a-4257-4e53-b706-8a2b29f4c2e2

Applications will be due: April 11, 2019

There will be a Technical assistance Call for interested potential applicants on: January 31, 2019 at 2 PM EST and information on accessing this is available in the NOFO.

After more than two years of stakeholder and public input, the Office of EMS at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and its federal partners have released “EMS Agenda 2050: A People-Centered Vision for the Future of Emergency Medical Services.” The document describes a vision for evidence-based, data-driven EMS that is integrated with the rest of the nation’s healthcare system.

Released in January 2019, EMS Agenda 2050 is the culmination of a two-year collaborative effort. It describes six guiding principles to help individuals, EMS leaders and communities in creating a more people-centered EMS system.  

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) and the Emergency Nurses Association (ENA) will publish the updated joint guidelines, “Pediatric Readiness in the Emergency Department,” that recommend ways health care providers can make sure every injured or critically ill child receives the best care possible.

 The joint policy statement, to be published in the November 2018 issue of Pediatrics, represents a revision of the 2009 policy statement and highlights recent advances in pediatric emergency care that may be incorporated into all emergency departments that care for children. The statement (available here) emphasizes the importance of evidence-based guidelines and includes additional recommendations for quality improvement plans focusing on children and disaster preparedness.