A bill introduced in New Jersey's Legislature would establish a system to track and analyze EMS crews' response to medical emergencies.
Assembly Health Committee chairman Herb Conaway is a doctor. He says the tracking system could help identify what procedures improve patient outcomes in emergency situations.
“What’s going on with the cardiac cases? How soon are we getting to them? What kind of treatments are we delivering there for someone with cardiac arrest? If it’s an issue of stroke, what are we doing in the prehospital, what kind of treatments are we providing? Are we making sure they get an aspirin?”
Senate Health Committee chairman Joe Vitale says the tracking system could help address the opioid epidemic.
“With fetanyl being added to heroin and the purity of that heroin and the overdoses that continue to happen every day in this state, they’ll be able to know where it’s happening, be able to alert the public, alert those who are using, those who are providing the assistance be able to respond appropriately and quickly.”
Scott Kasper is chairman of the New Jersey EMS Council. He says the tracking system could help determine if changes are needed to Improve emergency medical services.
"It may influence staffing patterns if we don't have enough EMS resources and service at any particular time of the day. And from a procedures perspective, there's always the question does what we do make a difference, does what we do matter? And we don't know that unless we can actually look at the data, compare what we're doing to the outcome of the patient."