Stats, stat! Leveraging Data to Improve Care, Operations, and Retention

Collegiate EMS agencies face a variety of common operational challenges, from staffing issues to underwhelming recruitment and retention rates. Low call volumes, high member turnover, and non-targeted recruitment strategies often exacerbate these issues. However, solutions are possible with the aid of an untapped organizational resource: data. Agencies often possess an unrealized amount of information, from trends in patient care reports to commonalities among members. This iteration of “Stats, stat!” broadens the analytic scope to examine how incorporating data analysis in quality improvement processes additionally benefits patient care, clinical performance, and resource allocation. This presentation overviews basic statistical analysis which enables agency leaders to effectively recognize members struggling with clinical skills, identify members likely to leave an organization or applicants likely to join the agency, and forecast call volumes to lend quantitative evidence to that well known, anecdotal suspicion that “tonight will be a bad night.” This lecture highlights the interconnectedness and diverse applications of these easily obtainable metrics, presents the results of these applications at Carnegie Mellon University EMS and the City of Pittsburgh EMS, identifies flaws and methodology improvements, and generalizes these approaches to enable audience members to identify their own solutions based on agency-specific priorities and needs.