Custom patient IDs and wristband scanning will enable seamless response across organizations during stress events
BOZEMAN, Mont., April 27, 2022 — Pulsara, the leading mobile telehealth, communication, and logistics platform that unites healthcare teams and technologies across organizations during dynamic events, announced today that they are releasing new functionality for mass casualty (MCIs) and multiple patient incidents (MPIs) that will help quickly scale emergency response.
The product’s new incident management capabilities will allow first responders and EMS providers to quickly create or join an existing patient channel by scanning custom armbands — such as public safety-issued bands or traditional triage tags used during a crisis, add patient condition (red, yellow, green, and black) within the app, and give incident command the ability to monitor the number, status, and severity of patients through a patient dashboard.
When responding to MCIs/MPIs, first responders and medics often use wristbands and/or triage tags to triage patients and visibly denote their condition. Pulsara’s new MCI functionality will allow first responders to scan these wristbands/triage tags and instantly start a new patient channel in Pulsara. Responders — from any organization — who subsequently treat the patient will be able to simply scan the wristband and will instantly be added to the patient’s channel. They will then be able to see all information that has previously been added to the case, including any known demographic information, vitals, any treatments provided and all communications around the patient. Medics will also be able to add, track, and modify the patient’s triage status in Pulsara, with the appropriate green, yellow, red, and black statuses that match traditional triage tags.
Pulsara has added a new MCI/MPI feature to its popular HQ product allowing the command center to monitor in near-real-time what is happening on the scene. Command centers will have easy access to the number of patients, their triage status, and any information the medics have entered about them. Command centers can then use this information to coordinate response with nearby hospitals and healthcare facilities, letting them know what to expect, the general severity of patients’ conditions, how many beds may be needed, and whether they may need to call in additional staff.
Once patients have been transported to the hospital, Pulsara cases can then be handed off to the facility, helping track patients throughout their care journey. Hospital staff can simply scan the patient barcode and instantly locate the patient channel, ensuring they are working on the right patient at the right time. Through the use of custom IDs, Pulsara creates instant shared awareness of where each patient is and what treatment they’ve received, especially in incidents and interactions that cross healthcare entities.
“This is a powerful new addition to Pulsara,” said Pulsara’s Product Owner, Rachael Lovallo. “EMS agencies and healthcare organizations already use Pulsara to communicate on a daily basis. That means that when Pulsara is used to scale up to meet the needs of a community during a stress event, clinicians are already familiar and comfortable with it, so the tool becomes a true asset to the process rather than another foreign and complicated system to figure out when seconds matter.”
MCIs are difficult to coordinate, as there are many moving parts and a large number of different local systems to connect. Existing solutions often aren’t used because they’re only pulled off the shelf once an emergency happens, and then no one has the muscle memory to know how to operate them during a crisis.
Pulsara solves that problem by building MCI capabilities into a