Articles
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CQI Program Management
Patient Refusals: Part 1. Incomplete Patient Assessment: The Most Common Risk to the Patient, EMS Provider, and Agency
The Most Preventable Dangerous Call in EMS? By Paul Girard & Kevin Kelley Every patient refusal stands or falls on one foundational question: Did EMS complete and document a sufficient assessment before accepting the refusal? When refusals are later scrutinized by a medical director, OEMS, DALA, or a court, incomplete [...]
Patient Refusals: A Risk to an EMS Providers Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness
The Most Preventable Dangerous Call in EMS? By Paul Girard & Kevin Kelley This article is the first in a 7-part series on EMS patient refusal implementation and documentation. Each article will take a look at one specific area of refusal documentation and how to best execute a patient refusal [...]
The Expert Reviewers Behind The G&A Way
Celebrating the EMS 1%’ers: The Expert Reviewers Behind The G&A Way! In emergency medicine, excellence isn’t optional—it’s essential. Nowhere is that more evident than in the elite ranks of EMS documentation professionals known as the EMS 1%’ers at Girard & Associates, Inc. Our expert reviewers represent the top tier of [...]
The G&A Way: How We Do It
Girard & Associates Delivers Unbiased, Expert EMS Run Report Reviews That Protect Patients, Providers—and Reputations! Could your patient care report withstand the scrutiny of a nationally televised murder trial—or protect you from charges if a critical mistake leads to tragedy? For EMS professionals, a single documentation error can carry life-or-death [...]
Garbage In, Garbage Out: How Bad Data Is Leading Ambulance Services Astray
What Is NEMSIS, and Where Did It Come From? NEMSIS — the National Emergency Medical Services Information System — is a federally supported data standard allowing EMS agencies to collect and submit patient care data in a consistent format. Developed in the early 2000s by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), it was [...]
The Secret of a Successful EMS CQI Coach: Understanding the “Why”
The Secret of a Successful EMS CQI Coach: Understanding the “Why” If you want to up your CQI game, perhaps a change in strategy is in order. Many, if not most, CQI professionals spend most of their time trying to understand what went wrong on a call. That is a [...]
The Art of Auditing a Run Report
It all starts with a good audit. The art of auditing an EMS run report is about identifying what can potentially be improved upon in the patient care experience. An audit is not just about identifying what went wrong. It is about determining what can be done better. Most EMS [...]
CQI And the Stroke Patient: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Ask many EMS CQI professionals how they CQI stroke calls and you are likely to hear their efforts revolve around recognition, treatment, and stroke alert notifications. Certainly, that is a good place to start. But as with all CQI efforts, simply collecting data points to produce reports and statistics [...]
Do I Really Need To Document How I Moved My Patient?
In the EMS world, there is increased importance placed on the need for proper documentation. For anyone paying attention for the past several years, many EMS experts have been calling for providers to be more detailed in documenting patient encounters. As an EMS CQI company, Girard & Associates has always [...]
