Editor's note: Information in this blog about the causes of child injury and death have been updated. Each year, the State Trauma Advisory Board collaborates with the ADHS Bureau of EMS and Trauma System (BEMSTS) to publish a report summarizing injury and trauma mortality in Arizona. This year, there are two new resources to share [...]
Public health oversees many areas, one of which is the Arizona trauma system. Each year, the State Trauma Advisory Board collaborates with the ADHS Bureau of EMS and Trauma System to publish a report summarizing trauma in Arizona. Data reported to the Arizona State Trauma Registry from Arizona trauma centers is analyzed to illustrate top [...]
Emergency medical service (EMS) workers, like paramedics and emergency medical technicians (EMT), run toward dangerous and chaotic situations to treat the sick, injured and dying. In addition to training and experience, EMS workers rely on medical equipment, medicine, and their vehicles to save lives when every second counts. To highlight EMS Week, we’re putting a [...]
May 21-27 is Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Week, and today is specifically recognized as EMS for Children Day. This year's theme is “EMS STRONG: Always in Service,” which for Arizona means a focus on the resiliency, wellness, and safety of EMS personnel. Arizona’s EMS personnel are an integral piece of our state’s public health and [...]
Our state’s trauma system is comprised of dedicated healthcare professionals delivering compassionate, quality care across 42 state-designated trauma centers (hospitals specializing in trauma care), 200+ emergency medical services agencies, and countless other first responders and heroic bystanders – all serving as a critical link in the trauma chain of survival for tens of thousands of [...]
Arizona uses a Certificate of Necessity process to license ambulance services. This process can be challenging for new applicants because it uses terminology and accounting practices that the person responsible for completing the application may not be familiar with. To help overcome that problem, our Bureau of EMS and Trauma System has begun posting important [...]
A joint task force made up of representatives from our department and the Arizona American Indian health care community has released the 2013 American Indian Trauma Report. This report highlights the on-going epidemic of trauma in the Native American Community and offers recommendations to decrease the rate of trauma including, incentivizing and expanding data collection [...]
On previous Blogs I’ve shared information about Community Integrated Paramedicine. One of the most promising opportunities for Community Paramedicine is in working with hospitals to prevent readmission of patients with diseases like diabetes, asthma or congestive heart failure. It’s also a great opportunity for EMS providers to provide some coaching on other prevention initiatives including [...]
We’ve been monitoring the response times for the big ambulance service provider - Rural Metro – since they went into bankruptcy in August. They have 13 different ambulance services in Arizona and we want to make sure that they're meeting the grade during their reorganization. We asked them to send us monthly reports on their response times [...]
How do we evaluate Arizona’s trauma system, you ask? Good question. Over the next few weeks I’ll blog about “Trauma System Evaluation 101” as well as some of the evaluation tools we use to assess Arizona’s trauma system. The goal of any trauma system is to get the right patient to the right place in [...]
