A 76-year-old male complaining of chest pain after a motor vehicle crash is assessed by the paramedic/basic crew on scene and the medic determines the patient is low likelihood for an ACS event and triages the call to the BLS partner for transport. I am sure this happens countless times [...]

Ever try to calculate the return on investment of your EMS CQI program? Pretty tough, right? After all, performing QA/QI/CQI functions is intangible and difficult to quantify, especially in financial terms. Not to mention that in strict accounting terms your return on investment is normally a function of how much [...]

Without doubt the most difficult part of performing quality improvement in EMS is, often times having the difficult conversation with coworkers regarding their patient care practices. In fact, one of the main reasons clients hire Girard & Associates is to outsource their QA/QI functions for this very reason. Having this [...]

In any EMS system there are going to be calls where, even with the best of intentions, patients do not receive the care they require. It happens every day and in every system. The fact is the job of providing pre-hospital patient care is a complex and chaotic one. It [...]

EMS Quality Improvement: The Missing Critical Component Does your EMS agency allocate a sufficient amount of resources to its quality improvement initiatives? If it doesn’t, it should! Today’s modern EMS system is expected to perform at the highest levels of clinical care. Unfortunately, many services do not have a solid [...]

No matter how diligent, skilled and earnest you are in your job, pretty much everyone dreads a performance review. Given the opportunity to forgo it, most of us would opt out if we could. But in EMS, how good you are at your job sometimes translates into lives lost and [...]