EMS Assessment from a Team that Cares

Michael Flanagan

President

Michael Flanagan, co-innovator and owner at Feedback Innovations, is a data-driven efficiency expert who truly understands EMS from all perspectives (as a caregiver, as a contract or accreditation compliance administrator and as a receiving facility manager for EMS patients). As Feedback Innovations’ leader, Mike applies his hands-on, seventeen-year experience as an EMT and paramedic with his successive years of management experience establishing and maintaining the emergency preparedness and security program for Steward Norwood Hospital, a 264-bed acute care facility (including ensuring compliance with Joint Commission-MDPH, OSHA, EPA and OSHA standards). Armed with the knowledge that his customers are using Feedback Innovations’ survey tools to assist them with EMS assessment for accreditations, marketing, and quality assurance and improvement, Mike oversees his company’s automated and objective analyses with a keen eye for offering customers individualized recommendations for continuing or expanding their survey queries or for using other tools that can help them meet their unique needs.

Mike’s impressive healthcare and EMS career is punctuated by a long list of efficiency improvement achievements. At Steward Norwood Hospital, Mike’s efforts included his ability to reduce patients’ length of stay which increased patients’ satisfaction by 30%; to reduce slip, trip and fall incidents at the hospital by 20%, to decrease emergency department wait times by 28%, to improve emergency psychiatric care by 50% in patient observations and a 20% reduction in the use of patient restraints. Mike also increased the number of IAHSS basic certified staff from 10% to 95%.

Mike’s investment in every Feedback Innovations customer’s success is testament throughout each and every query that appears on the company’s deliberate patient survey questionnaires. Mike has thoroughly vetted and tested each and every Feedback Innovations survey question using a comprehensive battery of qualifying and quantifying checks and balances that validate each customer’s survey process result. Mike’s accessibility and attention to assisting individual Feedback Innovations customers makes it possible for customers who identify, track and trend their information to then work smarter while reducing operational costs and improving perceptions about their company’s service.

William C. Mergendahl, Jr.

Partner

William (Bill) Mergendahl is Feedback Innovations’ co-founder, investor and advisor. He is also a lauded and award winning EMS leader, author and educator who implements his passion for tracking, trending and then consistently applying the principals of quality improvement at ProEMS, the company he leads in Cambridge, MA as CEO. During the past 25 years, Bill, a former paramedic and Northeastern University School of Law graduate, has also earned expert witness status for court decisions involving EMS clinical practice, ambulance operations and preparedness, ambulance reimbursement, continuous quality improvement, EMS education/training, emergency dispatch communications, EMS/ambulance regulations/policy and in the areas of general public health/safety.

Bill is particularly recognized as an EMS leader and advisor who regularly presents to national, regional and MA state conference attendees about using technology (including his Feedback Innovations tools) to measure and improve all aspects of an EMS provider’s organizational performance and the perceptions of such performance. Bill is credited with transforming a rather modest and closely held ambulance service into the model, municipally contracted, 9-1-1 EMS provider it is today.

Bill attributes the application of critical data gathering technologies with the credit of his being able to double his company’s annual revenue within the first three years working as COO; with assisting ProEMS in earning the distinctions of being the first nationally CAAS accredited ambulance service in the State; and with the company’s ability to achieve the first CoAEMSP accreditation in the state for his company’s EMS (paramedic) education/training academy; and, with helping the education/training academy earn State of MA OEMS accreditation.

Tim Harren

IT Specialist

Tim began his EMS career in 1998 in New Jersey as a volunteer EMT Basic. In 1999, he began working for a large hospital-based EMS agency as an EMT assigned to a Critical Care Transport unit. In 2001, he was certified as an Emergency Medical Dispatcher and rose to the level of Crew Chief. In this role, he was also responsible for the training of new employees. In 2004, Tim shifted gears to the information technology department, where he was responsible for the maintenance of the computer infrastructure, focusing on the dispatch center and mobile data communications.

Tim became a member of the Feedback Innovations staff in 2012, where his focus is integration with our clients.

Steven Athey

Product Representative

Steven L. Athey is a well-respected consultant and longtime leader in EMS. Steven has spent a lifetime in the ambulance industry and has held every conceivable position. Beginning as an “ambulance attendant” in 1971, he climbed through the ranks of EMS to the executive suite, where he held prestigious senior level roles with two national, publicly-traded companies: Med-Trans and the Rural/Metro Corporation.

Steven was responsible for the clinical proficiency, operational integrity and financial performance for dozens of individual ambulance operations during that time. He has managed urban and rural EMS organizations alike, and is well-versed in the intricacies and challenges that today’s operators face. Two high performance systems under his operational direction were awarded the Texas EMS System of the Year Award in 1983 and 1992.

Steven’s experience and background have helped shape his own company, Health Care Visions. This nationally recognized EMS consulting firm has been in business for 20 years and serves clients from coast to coast. He provides those clients, both large and small, with the personal and focused attention required to develop client-specific, appropriate solutions.

Steven earned his undergraduate degree and his MBA from Texas Wesleyan University, where he currently holds an adjunct faculty position in the School of Business. He is a member of the American Ambulance Association, the Texas Ambulance Association and the Oklahoma Ambulance Association, and has served the national association as a board member, committee chair and Ethics Committee member.