The Chester County EMS Region maintains a Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) initiative. The purpose of this program is to monitor the effectiveness of the EMS system in the county and identify areas that need improvement to ensure the best possible care for the people we serve. This program is not intended to replace any current Quality Assurance program your service may already have in place, it is meant to supplement your existing process and monitor the system on a countywide basis. Not only will specific skills be looked at, but system policies and procedures will also be examined.
A committee has been formed, composed of EMS providers in the County, and staff members from DES responsible for the administration of the system. The committee’s responsibilities include identifying skills and processes to examine, trends that may exist, and ways to improve or sustain trends that are identified. The committee will also identify two projects each year that will be examined on a system level (e.g. Chest Pain, Stroke, etc).
To make this process work we need everyone’s participation. We will need your cooperation in submitting charts and being receptive to fixing the system when a trend is identified. Please understand that CQI is not used to identify individuals or individual services that are deficient, it is intended to find deficiencies within the system. Changes that are recommended through the CQI process will not be individual based, they will be system based. Also, there will be no action taken against licensure or certification as a result of the CQI process. This is a process that should not be feared but instead embraced.