Assessing satisfaction and quality in the EMS/HEMS working relationship

Area of Science:

• Emergency medicine
• Healthcare quality improvement
• Transport medicine

Background:

• Air medical transport is crucial for critically ill patients, bridging pre-hospital and hospital care.
• The transition of care from ground emergency medical services (EMS) to air medical services involves undefined elements, impacting patient care continuity.
• Understanding the EMS perspective on air medical interactions is vital for quality assessment.

Purpose of the Study:

• To pilot the development of survey instrumentation for measuring key quality elements in EMS and air medical crew interactions.
• To create a tool assessing satisfaction with air medical services from the EMS provider's viewpoint.

Main Methods:

• A focus group of 12 EMS and air medical professionals defined key interaction activities.
• A 16-item Likert scale questionnaire was developed and distributed to EMS agencies in Ohio.
• Exploratory factor analysis was used to identify subscales and assess the instrument's reliability.

Main Results:

• 380 questionnaires were returned between 2009-2011.
• Factor analysis identified themes including patient care, helicopter EMS (HEMS) operations, response time, and feedback.
• The survey instrument demonstrated good internal reliability (alphas 0.85-0.88) and performed as a single scale in later iterations.

Conclusions:

• A survey instrument was successfully developed using mixed methods to evaluate EMS provider satisfaction with HEMS.
• This research pioneers the assessment of the EMS perspective on air medical transport relationships.
• The developed survey can inform process improvement initiatives within the air medical transport industry.