Seattle's Emergency Services
Improving Triage Accuracy in a Top EMS Department
A division within the Seattle Fire Department, MedicOne is responsible for 149,000 emergency-medical calls per year.
They have a proven track record of innovation and already led the industry in patient survival rates for cardiac cases.
Nonetheless, they wanted to do better.
Specifically, MedicOne was not satisfied with the off-the-shelf protocols they relied on and wanted the ability to customize.
Staff retention and empowerment was also a top concern.
"Before partnering with Corti, we were looking for a solution that would allow us to reduce and standardize call time and build our own protocols. Reviewing protocols took us hours, and changes were hard to make. Corti’s Triage solution helped to change this.”
Hilton Almond, Seattle Fire Department Firefighter/Dispatcher
Challenge
SFD needed to review calls in order to uncover areas for potential improvement, but their systems meant that only 0.25% of calls could be reliably reviewed and those were typically selected based on customer complaints.
Reviews took 30-40 minutes to complete and ever-increasing call volumes meant that increasing the number of calls reviewed simply could not be done manually.
This need for better review as well as subsequent protocol iteration was doubly apparent when COVID-19 hit. The pandemic presented a need to create and iterate a brand-new protocol as the world’s understanding of the situation developed.
Solution
With Corti’s Triage and the ability to easily review and adjust protocols at scale, SFD adjusted key questions in Corti’s protocol editor, including order and phrasing, which decreased the time it took call takers to identify key medical information.
Stroke calls alone decreased by 13% overall.
Shaving off these valuable minutes in each call led to faster dispatch of resources and thereby faster medical treatment.
In addition to rapidly deploying a new protocol when COVID-19 hit, we also implemented a series of specific keyword detections to help call takers recognize pandemic-related calls.
