A Critical and Growing "Hard Cost" Problem

Imagine knowing that, in the midst of a budget crisis that's leading to EMS and fire department layoffs, your agency spent $114,000 on what it refers to as "duplicate data entry work."  This was the case in Mesa, Arizona in 2010 — practically yesterday, yet dissatisfaction with the status quo is hardly unique:  

Rampant inefficiencies — and the financial hardships that First Responders face because of them — plague the U.S., from the Carolinas to California and the Gulf Coast, as borne out by RFP [Randolph County, NC] after RFP [Grand County, CO] after RFP [Virginia Office of Emergency Medical Services].  

The situation is no better on a feature-specific level: the leading publisher of ER wait times commands 20% of the market...but the remaining 80% of hospitals don't use a competitive product; they don't publish their wait times at all.  Do hospitals believe that publishing wait times would serve no good?  Or that the leading technologies have failed to deliver a compelling cost-effective, verifiable improvement they can afford? 

A 2009 analysis by Santa Clara County (CA) found that less than half of EMS agencies use technology to collect, process, and transmit patient data in an ambulance.  This means over 50% of triage and transport relies on paperwork...and the hope that notes taken by medics while racing through traffic will be readable.  

When it comes to emergency services — not just official agencies, but also industrial teams responding to oil rig fires, mine collapses, and more — what passes for "state of the art" is frighteningly old-school. In the United States, everyone believes that someone else is equipping First Responders. In emerging economies around the world, the situation is even more dire, with the disaster management role falling to the military.

  Key Resources

 

   BEYOND patient data collection.

   BEYOND ambulance run paperwork reduction.

   BEYOND secure, real-time incident data collection.

   BEYOND LUCID TECHNOLOGIES, INC.

   MEDIVIEW™ highlights:

    •  Reduce the costs of emergency healthcare.

    •  Improve access to critical incident information.

    •  Streamline First Responder-to-hospital communications.

    •  Eliminate the use of paper throughout First Response.

    •  Help medics focus on saving lives—not on paperwork.

    •  Leverage e-commerce technologies to make it easier
       for our customers to obtain our innovations.