Town Hall highlights TI grant, EMSC updates

On May 12, Emergency Medical Services for Children (EMSC) stakeholders gathered for the program’s quarterly Town Hall meeting. Hosted by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), which funds and administers the EMSC Program, the meeting is geared toward State Partnership managers, but serves as a venue for connecting across all the various EMSC arms.

The featured guest speaker was Craig Newgard, MD, MPH, Professor of Emergency Medicine at Oregon Health and Science University and Principal Investigator for an EMSC Targeted Issues grant. Dr. Newgard presented an update on his grant project, “A Multi-State Evaluation of Emergency Department Pediatric Readiness: Guideline Update and Association with Quality, Outcomes, and Cost.” His research, which draws on data from the National Pediatric Readiness Project assessment, demonstrates a correlation between pediatric readiness and short- and long-term survival after trauma.

“We are looking at changes over time in readiness over this 2012 through 2021 time period, and specifically, at how that translates into number of lives saved,” said Dr. Newgard. “So, if we think about EDs that have raised their level of readiness, have they raised it enough so that it’s really making a difference and more children are surviving who would have died back in 2013? And if not, are there other ways that we could try to optimize our system to get kids the care that they need and really try to match them with the highest-readiness ED as possible?”

Additional updates were provided by representatives from the National Association of State EMS Organizations; the National Emergency Medical Services for Children Data Analysis Resource Center, the EMSC Innovation and Improvement Center (EIIC), and HRSA.