New Performance Measures Aim to Enhance Pediatric Readiness

The EMSC Program has released nine performance measures and two program evaluative measures for 2023-2027 with the publication of “Performance Measures 2023 Implementation Manual for State Partnership Grantees.”

Performance measures are the primary goals of the EMSC State Partnership Program, which includes EMSC Programs in 57 states, territories, and jurisdictions, and serve as standards of achievement for grantees. The first set of performance measures was released in 2006 and a revised set in 2017.

Performance measures evolve over time as progress is made on past measures, the health care landscape shifts, and new priorities and strategies are identified.

The new measures

The nine performance measures focus on:

• Hospital emergency departments (EDs): Establishing standardized pediatric recognition programs, increasing the number of pediatric emergency care coordinators (PECCs), ensuring staff weigh and record children in kilograms, and ensuring hospital disaster plans address the needs of children.
• Prehospital settings: Establishing standardized recognition programs for EMS agencies, increasing PECCs, increasing the number of EMS agencies that have a process for skills-checking on the use of pediatric equipment, and ensuring EMS agency disaster plans address the needs of children.
• Family representation: Prioritizing and advancing family partnership and leadership in efforts to improve EMSC systems of care.

The two evaluative measures are designed to:

• assess EMSC Program permanence, and
• ensure EMSC-related mandates and statutes are in place.

Supporting resources

To support the implementation of and progress on these measures, the EMSC Innovation & Improvement Center has curated a repository of tools and resources on its website. For each outlined measure, program managers can find resources that can help with creating action plans and moving measures forward with promising practice examples. More resources will be added soon.

Learn more about performance measures and related resources on the EIIC’s website. Or, learn more about data collection for the measures and history of past measures on the EMSC Data Center’s website.