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Automate ePCR workflows and access patient history lookup in the field.
Reduced turnaround time at the hospital and improved care in the field with patient history lookup.
The Longview Fire Department (LFD) serves the City of Longview, Washington. The department provides essential services to the community including Fire Suppression, Emergency Medical Services, Special Operations, Emergency Preparedness, and Fire Prevention and Education. LFD provides service to an area of approximately 14.7 square miles comprised of urban/suburban development occupied by more than 38,000 citizens. Longview Fire’s front-line service providers consist of 32 career Firefighter/EMTs, 14 Firefighter/Paramedics, 3 Battalion Chiefs, an Administrative Battalion Chief, and a Fire Marshal. Each of three 24-hour shift platoons is led by a Battalion Chief. Fire suppression and emergency medical services are deployed through three career staffed fire units and one command unit.
In 2021, Longview Fire Department received 8,855 calls for service. 3,049 of those incidents were non-emergent and turned over to our contracted private ambulance company without fire department response. Longview Fire responded to the other 5,806 incidents and there was a total of 5,152 patients transported to the hospital by either private ambulance or LFD.
Prior to implementing Kno2, patient care reports were printed and left at the destination hospital’s emergency department and then routed to the health information management department, after which the reports were scanned into the patient’s electronic record. This process was labor intensive and untimely.
As a result, clinicians in the emergency department or in the in-patient setting did not have ready-access to the reports while they were treating the patient.
Longview Battalion Chief Eric Koreis attended a Regional EMS Council meeting in Vancouver, WA. A topic of discussion at the meeting was when fire departments or EMS services could reasonably expect to connect to hospital computer systems. A senior physician medical director commented, “We’re not going to see that during my lifetime.” But this was all about to change.
Looking for a solution to the challenge, Battalion Chief Eric Koreis said that “when we embarked on this journey, we were trying to invent it from scratch. We were trying to create our own network connectivity to the hospital. The challenge was that we weren’t able to speak the hospital IT department’s language.” The good news is that with ImageTrend and Kno2, Longview Fire would solve this problem with very little effort on the part of the agency or the hospitals.
“When we embarked on this journey, we were trying to invent it from scratch. We were trying to create our own network connectivity to the hospital. The challenge was that we weren’t able to speak the hospital IT department’s language.” – Eric Koreis, Battalion Chief | Longview Fire Department
Through their existing ImageTrend Elite system and their newly activated Kno2 subscription, Longview Fire can now electronically lookup patient histories in the field and automatically transmit ePCRs directly into the hospitals’ EHRs.
ImageTrend’s integration with Kno2’s connection to Carequality provides connectivity to hospitals, clinics and physician offices where the patient lives, whether that is locally or in any zip code in the US. The ability to query patient records in the field enables better pre-hospital care.
Once the Kno2 account for electronic PCR transmission was activated, the connections were verified with three area hospitals – PeaceHealth, Providence and Legacy Health – allowing them to select their preferred method of delivery.
Automating their ePCR workflows led to improved turnaround time and efficiency for Longview’s medics and allows clinicians to access the reports within the patient’s chart at the hospital. Furthermore, LFD’s use of the treatment query feature in the integration between ImageTrend Elite and Kno2 has made an immediate impact. Prior to the use of Kno2 integrated with ImageTrend, medics relied solely on a patient’s memory and description of previous medical history, medications and allergies.
Nobody could figure out how to treat this patient, but the Kno2 query returned a full record of the patient’s medications that helped identify the patient’s background so that proper care could be delivered.
Eric Koreis
Battalion Chief | Longview Fire Department
Longview’s use of Kno2 provides the medics an accurate view of the patient’s medical history, allergies and current prescribed medications, in the field. “We’ve experienced great success with this feature,” said Koreis. “As an example, there was a behavioral patient that was under the care of a nurse in a facility. Nobody could figure out how to treat this patient, but the query returned a full record of the patient’s medications that helped identify the patient’s background so that proper care could be delivered. Medics are not only using this feature to find unknown medical problems, but they are also using it to populate their reports. This is a game changer.”
As for that senior physician medical director’s challenge to the healthcare community, mission accomplished in your lifetime.
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