This newsletter includes updates on trainings and seminars, fiscal reporting, HIPPA and bidirectional information exchange, EMSC, and the World Trauma Symposium. We hope you are staying healthy and safe. Thank you for all you do for the citizens of Utah.

Brett Cross, MPA, NRP

At this time, and (at least) for the remainder of the year, there will be no in person EMS Education courses. All new and renewing educators will complete online training.

While we understand all online instruction may be challenging we are confident we can deliver high quality training that will be beneficial and engaging. We are still working to obtain a vendor to deliver the training content. Registration will be the same through our EMS Licensing website. From there you will be sent additional information about how to access the online environment.

Our staff has been actively engaged in shifting the content to online as well as assisting the department with the Coronavirus response. We apologize for the delay in information dissemination and schedule adjustments.

Ground Rules:

1. Everyone who participates in an online training will be required to have a webcam and microphone. It is the participants' responsibility to ensure their webcam, microphone, internet connection, and required software are working prior to course start.

2. You will be required to be present for the entire training. There will be touch points and failure to complete the online checks and any other requirements will result in an incomplete for the training.

3. There will be no leniency for technology errors that are not caused by the vendor or our staff.

4. No one will be allowed to call in only for any training sessions as there will be visuals.

5. Groups may take trainings together at stations or offices. There will be specific reporting requirements when this occurs.

Dean Penovich, MPH

Guy Dansie, MPA

Isn't that a catchy title? Nothing gives an EMS professional more thrill than knowing data is getting better. Sarcasm aside, we are finding positive things generally with our data submissions and collections. It has been very helpful during the COVID-19 pandemic to know how all of you are performing, and ways we can keep our operations moving. Thank you for that!

The Utah Department of Heath’s Office of Internal Audit recently conducted select annual EMS agency fiscal audits. The good news from the audits is improvement in accuracy in the fiscal reports and patient care data. The difficult part is making sure EMS agencies understand the expectations, ensuring that agencies report reliable fiscal information, and items are tracked or coded consistently.

Recently, we discovered that billable transports for the Medicaid assessment are not always understood. Let’s review it briefly. A billable transport either for your fiscal report or for the Medicaid assessment is defined as moving a patient who requires an ambulance for transport from a scene to a hospital, or from a licensed care facility, including hospitals, to another licensed care facility commonly known as an inter-facility transfer. Any time a patient is discharged from care, or otherwise does not require an ambulance it is not a “billable” transport. Also calls do not equal transports. Call volume includes non-transports due to a host of reasons. Please do not report your call volume as billable patient transports! It can become a very expensive mistake for your Medicaid assessment.

Patient care reporting has greatly improved over the past few years. Thank you, again! We still see occasional errors in coding, so we encourage your data managers to work closely with the Bureau to find and prevent coding mistakes. It is a constant battle due to staffing changes, software issues, etc. Your efforts to work through the difficulties is paying dividends to the overall data quality.

Last, but not least, there are a few things that need improvement:

• Meeting the reporting deadlines. Some EMS agencies are still not submitting the fiscal report by the due date. Reports received on time helps us avoid holes in our data including data we use to help determine the ground ambulance rates. Please make note of deadlines.

• Be sure someone who works with the financial statements completes the FTG.

• Remember, we set new ground ambulance rates every year now! We are required to update rates, so be mindful of the changes even though they are not uploaded in the Division of Administrative Rules for two or more months after they become effective. With all of the financial hardships, we do not want any service to struggle more due to ignorance of bill rates and allowances.

You are all heroes! Thank you for being professional in a very difficult time. We are grateful for your dedication.

EMS agencies nationwide still widely report that hospitals and other healthcare providers refuse to share patient information with them, citing Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) concerns. Misconceptions about HIPAA create artificial barriers to legitimate, approved bidirectional data exchange between EMS and other providers. As a result, many healthcare systems are missing a critical opportunity to improve patient outcomes and advance evidence-based practices in prehospital care.

To conclusively answer this question, the National Emergency Medical Services Information System (NEMSIS) Technical Assistance Center (TAC) collaborated with Page, Wolfberg & Wirth to provide an expert legal opinion regarding the bidirectional sharing of patient information between Emergency Medical Services (EMS) and other healthcare providers.

Imaginary Barriers: How HIPAA Promotes Bidirectional Patient Data Exchange With Emergency Medical Services provides evidence, precedence, and legal opinion to help educate and encourage healthcare providers to appropriately share patient information with EMS. This paper addresses why HIPAA does not restrict, and how the law promotes, bidirectional sharing of patient information between hospitals and EMS agencies. Please access the PDF here: https://nemsis.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/HIPAA_An-Imaginary-Barrier-to-Data-Exchange.pdf

Please feel free to share this document with any EMS or hospital stakeholder that may benefit from the information. You are also welcome to share the document (in its original form) or the link on your website, newsletters, message boards, or social media platforms.

For questions, please contact Dr. Clay Mann, clay.mann@utah.edu, NEMSIS TAC or Eric Chaney, eric.chaney@dot.gov, NHTSA OEMS.

Thank you,

The NEMSIS TAC Team

To better understand the EMS system’s ability to care for pediatric patients, the EMS for Children Program conducted a national survey of EMS agencies. The following are the results of this quality improvement effort. EMS agencies can learn more about their state efforts by contacting their state EMS for Children Program Manager shown in the Resources sections of this 3‐page report.

Click here to view report!

The World Trauma Symposium, to be held on September 14-15 will provide eight hours of prehospital trauma sessions from experts in trauma care practice and innovation. This year's theme is Trauma Care in a Changing World.

Designed by NAEMT's Prehospital Trauma Committee, the symposium will feature insights from the top global experts who are delivering these new solutions. The program incorporates expert presentations, panel discussions, debates, time for participant questions, the latest trauma technology, and opportunities to network with practitioners and physicians from around the world. It's prehospital trauma education you can't get anywhere else!

Register here

The symposium is held in conjunction with EMS World Expo and provides up to 8 hours of CAPCE-accredited CE, CME or nursing CE.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe best practices for tourniquet use on pediatric patients.
• Identify adult and pediatric airway management techniques.
• Identify the impact of COVID-19 on prehospital and trauma care.
• Explain the difference in various prehospital analgesia.
• Summarize agency use of whole blood in prehospital care.
• Recognize critical errors in multi trauma prehospital procedures.
• Compare thoracic trauma treatment approaches for tension pneumothorax.
• Recognize innovative approaches to hemodynamic control of traumatic bleeding.

Email: ems@utah.gov
Website: bemsp.utah.gov
Location: 3760 South Highland Drive, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
Phone: 8012736666
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UBEMSP/
Twitter: @UBEMSP