North Carolina — Targeted Issue

Pediatric Performance Measures: Improving EMS Care for Time-Critical Illness and Injury

Sept. 1, 2016 - Aug. 31, 2019

Grant Number
H34MC30234
Project Overview
Our proposal will explore the intersection of EMS care, benchmarking, personalized messaging, education, and novel communication platforms to drive performance change in the field. Change has yet to be made in our community, despite this wealth of knowledge. If we can successfully implement a low-cost method of driving real change in prehospital care in nine NC counties, we can easily apply this knowledge to larger areas with many more resources at their disposal. Proposes to implement a focused program of education and performance improvement feedback tools targeting both the individual EMS provider as well as the EMS System in order to improve EMS patient care for pediatric patients with time-sensitive critical illness or injury. Goal: Develop a QI program that improves prehospital emergency care of children. Implement a focus on education and performance improvement feedback targeting individual provider and EMS system for three areas: i.e.: pediatric protocols and procedures for sepsis, respiratory distress and trauma (lack of research around performance measures with these topics). Project Aims: (1) Develop and deploy a performance improvement program for the 3 focus areas using online educational courses and individual feedback using Performance Adherence Reports (PARs) benchmarking performance of local EMS against state standards and providers in similar systems to improve compliance and care. (2) Quantify changes in NC EMS protocol and procedure performance measure compliance. (3) Identify the benefits of and barriers to the use of PARs and online educational courses using focus groups.
Institution
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Main Contacts
Award Amount
$823,917

Contacts

Name Role(s) Phone Email
Jane Brice, MD, MPH
  • Principal Investigator
 (919) 843-3045 jane_brice@med.unc.edu
E. Brooke Lerner, PhD
  • Co-Principal Investigator
 (716) 645-9726 lerner@buffalo.edu