Percentage of Cardiac Arrest Patients Arriving to Hospital w/Pulse (Council Key Result Indicator #5)
Measure Description/Definition
Every year, more than 300,000 people experience an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in the United States.1 The Utstein principle is the international, gold-standard by which modern engaged EMS systems measure the effectiveness of their response system when caring for victims of sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) in prehospital environments.
This measure focuses on patients who were in a public location, had a bystander witness the SCA, and were found in a shockable rhythm. These individuals are the ones the EMS system can have the most impact on. Ultimately, the Utstein survival rate is the percent of patients discharged alive from a hospital.
The Fire Department works with the transporting ambulance service to record information on each cardiac arrest in Olathe. This includes patient outcome, in the CARES registry – the Cardiac Arrest Registry to Enhance Survival – a national network established by the CDC to improve data collection on cardiac arrests in the United States. Tracking this information helps discover ways to improve our response and compare our performance to local, state and national performance data. We are hopeful this tracking will help us identify ways to continue to improve a patient’s chance of surviving a cardiac arrest in Olathe.
Target Determination
The national average from 2013 - 2019 was 33.1%. Since Olathe's performance is consistently better than this target, the target was increased to 45% in 2018.
Analysis
In Olathe, the percentage of cardiac arrest patients (with attempted resuscitation) who were discharged from the hospital was 45.5%. Olathe consistently out performs the national average of 33%.
The department’s success has continued to increase steadily for the last several years. In fact, the target was raised based on our own previous performance as benchmarks, peer communities and national trends tended to be lower. Continued investment in technology and training allow firefighter/paramedics to quickly respond to a patient’s cardiac needs.
In 2020, the Fire Department continued efforts to promote CPR education in the community. This ensures people are trained to help in the Chain of Survival – a four-link intervention process which can help save the lives of patients. The links are early access to emergency care via 911, early CPR (bystander), early defibrillation (AED) and early advanced care by emergency responders. When each link in the chain works successfully the chance of surviving a cardiac arrest increases greatly.
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