Feds Host Listening Summit on EMS/Hospital Data Exchange

Every EMS provider wishes for accurate and complete data about a patient's history and medical conditions.  Oftentimes, hospitals are in possession of these potentially helpful records, but traditionally do not shared these with EMS systems.  Many wonder: what are the hurdles that prevent the bidirectional sharing of electronic health records? And what can be done about overcoming them?

Enter the Federal Interagency Committee on Emergency Medical Services (FICEMS), who used its charter as a coordinator of federal agencies to host the National Pre-Hospital and Hospital Data Integration Summit on January 29, 2020.

The Office of EMS at NHTSA worked with the Department of Health and Human Services Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT to convene a variety of stakeholders for a day so that ideas and best practices could be shared.  Presentations came from multiple perspectives, including municipalities such as Prince George's County Fire Department (MD) to state officials such as the Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Services Systems (MIEMSS) to industry (Cerner Corporation and ESO).  

Key takeaways from the meeting included the discussion of the necessity for culture change, where EMS providers are considered a part of the healthcare team.  

Meeting notes read: "In the short term, culture needs to change in hospitals and EMS agencies, which will require outreach and explanations of the reasons for integrating prehospital and hospital data. Another short-term need is to develop a value proposition that can support reimbursement for data integration and demonstrate that HIPAA does not prevent data integration."

The meeting notes and slides are available to the public on NHTSA's website.  For these notes and more information on the project, visit NHTSA's EMS and Healthcare Data Integration site.