By Tim Nowak

The Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s Triple Aim Initiative establishes patient satisfaction as an important benchmark.

As new industry standards are set, measuring patient satisfaction becomes a benchmark EMS agencies must meet in order to get accreditation and better serve their patient population.

Patient satisfaction is becoming an important benchmark for accreditation. (Photo/Pixabay)
For example, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) has taken an active role in recognizing the need for healthcare agencies to improve patient satisfaction data by developing its Triple Aim Initiative.

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New York City had an ambulance service for sick horses, in 1867, two years before there was an ambulance service for people. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals decided that ambulances were needed for horses, two years before Bellevue Hospital decided the same thing. (Needless to say, neither horses nor humans were offered a patient satisfaction survey.)
Astonishingly, even after many cities and towns had ambulance services, there were few federal laws regulating them until the 1970s.

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When we think we have it bad today it is good to remember how ambulances were called for and dispatched when they were first invented.  When Manhattan’s Bellevue Hospital began its ambulance service in 1869, the second in the country (after Cincinnati), they were impeded by the absence of telephones, which hadn’t been invented yet. Calling an ambulance in New York City worked like this: A patrolman would discover someone who is ill or injured and use a public telegraph station (itself a recent innovation) to contact his precinct, which would send out policemen with a stretcher.

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During the Napoleonic wars at the turn of the 18th century, Surgeon Dominique-Jean Larrey developed new emergency procedures, many of them still in use today in modernized forms. Not only did he create “flying ambulances” that brought immediate and well-provisioned aid to the battlefield, but he also imposed order on the treatment that was taking place in the most disorderly of environments.

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Modern emergency medicine began on the battlefields of the Napoleon wars in the late 1700s. Physician Dominique-Jean Larrey was dismayed at the practices of the time, which left wounded soldiers on the field until the battle was over. By this time the danger to those who would pick them up lessened. Unfortunately, by this time many of the wounded were already dead.

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Recently, I had the dubious pleasure of becoming a patient again. Without divulging the embarrassing details, let’s just say my bench pressing days are over.  I’ve been fortunate during my life not to have sustained any serious injuries. Sure, I’ve had the run of the mill twisted ankles, pulls and strains but nothing worse, permanent, or threatening to my preferred way of life (or fragile man-ego), until now.

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EMS providers understand the value of recording and tracking vital signs for patients. These important readings inform decision making when time is of the essence and lives are on the line. However, too many EMS providers overlook the powerful indicators that data can provide about their own company’s vitality. Instead they adopt a “business as usual” attitude that becomes increasingly out of touch with a rapidly evolving industry.

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The American engineer, statistician, professor, author, lecturer, and management consultant, William Edwards Demming, answered that question by quipping, “Without data you’re just another person with an opinion.”
While that might sound like a witty response for use during a county budget hearing, he was painfully correct. There are varied reasons why having the data is necessary.

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