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Concurrent Block #6

Community Strategies & Survivorship

Thinking Differently about How to Improve Survival from SCA in Rural Settings

Committed to the Heart: How a State Office of Rural Health Became Engaged with Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest.

Friday, December 1, 2023
2:55 PM – 3:20 PM PST
Location: Town and Country Ballroom C

    Primary Presenter(s)

  • Scott Helle, BBA, EMT-B

    Rural Project Manager
    Kentucky Office of Rural Health
    Hazard, KY, United States

    Disclosure(s): No financial relationships to disclose

    • Moderator(s)

  • Katie N. Dainty, PhD

    Research Chair, Patient-Centred Outcomes
    North York General Hospital
    Toronto, ON, Canada

    Disclosure information not submitted.

Disclosure(s):
Scott Helle, BBA, EMT-B: No financial relationships to disclose
Summary: The Kentucky Office of Rural Health (KORH) rolled out the initiative to improve out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survival rate for the counties served by Kentucky Critical Access Hospitals (CAH). This presentation will discuss lessons learned in implementing a statewide initiative to implement an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest program for rural Kentucky.

Synopsis:
In the fall of 2019, KORH received a three-year EMS supplement funding from HHS HRSA Federal Office of Rural Health Policy’s Medicare Rural Hospital Flexibility (Flex) grant to create what was branded Committed to the Heart Initiative. The plan was to create a three-step project to achieve the goal of increasing survival rates in rural Kentucky for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.
The first step was focused on community education to increase the number of rural citizens who were certified in cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The second step was to identify and to locate all of the AED’s locations within the target area, then register them on the AED Registry. This would allow for 911 systems to have a list of all locations of AED’s resulting in community members having directions to the nearest AED to use when need for OHCA. The third and most significant step was to implement the CARES (Cardiac Arrest Registry to Enhance Survival) registry under the guidance of a statewide coordinator.
During the presentation I will discuss about the success of the project along with the barriers that the State of Rural Health faced during development and implementation, as well as how trying to implement a statewide program during a pandemic that impacted the success of the program.

Learning Objectives:

  • To demonstrate the success and barriers of implementing a statewide program based on improving out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survival rates in an effort that other states can learn from the Kentucky Office of Rural Health experience.
  • This presentation will include ways to educate citizens that can lead to a comprehensive change to a culture of excellence and improved CPR training in the community, schools and workplace.
  • This presentation will discuss how to implement three (3) elements of a comprehensive dispatch CPR and/or rapid dispatch program.
  • This presentation will discuss ways to advance Public Access AED placement and utilization.
  • This presentation will include components of a high quality collaborative cardiovascular and resuscitation program in a dispatch, EMS and / or healthcare system that has demonstrated improvement in survival from SCA.
  • This presentation will include strategies for implementing data collection and quality improvement programs in an ECC system to support accountability and reporting.
  • This presentation will describe three (3) strategies for implementing effective support systems for cardiac arrest victims, survivors and their families and rescuers.
  • This presentation will describe one or more survivor / rescuer stories that can be used to illustrate an effective chain of survival for cardiac arrest.