Future Now
The IFTF Blog
Improving EMS Efficiency w/Technology
From www.marketwatch.com/news/story/acs-awarded-4-million-contract/story.aspx:
Affiliated Computer Services, Inc. today announced a $4 million contract to provide electronic patient records capture for the City of New Orleans Emergency Medical Services (EMS) agency.
Under the terms of the five-year contract, ACS will equip all New Orleans' ambulances with the state-of-the-art FIREHOUSE (FH) Mobile EMS software that allows local EMS personnel to record complete patient data in real-time, whether in the field at a patient's side or in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
"We look forward to stepping into a new future with ACS through the adoption of electronic patient care records and electronic billing, which will allow us to provide our city with the highest level of pre-hospital emergency medicine to-date," said Jullette Saussy, M.D., director of EMS for the City of New Orleans. "For 19 years, ACS has continued to work with us side-by-side to ensure that our needs as a revenue-generating EMS agency are met while also remaining patient-care focused throughout the process."
Since 1989, ACS has supported the City of New Orleans EMS Department with a full range of professional services; computer operations and data center management; quality and production control; as well as auditing, accounting and customer service. In 2003, ACS provided handheld computers for use on the city's ambulance units to help improve data collection procedures and ambulance response times.
After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, ACS continued to serve as a full-service partner for the City of New Orleans despite the loss of key hardware which required ACS to temporarily return to a paper-based billing system until the company could ship new equipment into the city.
"This integration of FH Mobile EMS with ACS' FIREHOUSE software will provide New Orleans paramedics with a state-of-the-art system that will give them the ability to reach the patient faster, and treat, transport and document the incident seamlessly and more efficiently than ever before," said Louis Schiavone, ACS vice president of Public Safety and Justice Systems.