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Quality indicators for out-of-hospital emergency medical services: the paramedics' perspective
M D Greenberg1, H G Garrison, T R Delbridge
1Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
Objective:
Out-of-hospital emergency medical services (EMS) need relevant and measurable indicators of quality. Those front-line workers who provide service directly to the customer are integral to the process of defining quality. The authors' objective was to obtain from paramedics, the front-line workers in the EMS system, their perspective on quality of care.
Methods:
During regularly scheduled education sessions, 102 of the 140 field paramedics from a large municipal EMS system attended a presentation on total quality management. The paramedics were then assigned to focus groups and asked to identify quality indicators and provide recommendations for how they should be measured.
Results:
Eighteen different quality indicators were identified. In addition, the paramedics suggested 17 ways to measure these proposed quality indicators.
Conclusions:
From the perspective of the study participants, indicators of the quality of out-of-hospital care differ from many used in traditional EMS quality assurance programs. Future studies should investigate the applicability of these indicators to the total quality management of EMS systems.
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