A new sponsored project–the Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest Learning Community (OHCA)–has been approved by the Washtenaw Health Initiative Steering Committee.
The learning community, which aims to double cardiac arrest survival rates in the region, is comprised of multidisciplinary representatives from Michigan’s Washtenaw-Livingston County Medical Control Authority, a two-county entity that coordinates emergency medical services.
“Rapid treatment is critical to improve survival from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest,” write Coulter-Thompson and Shields. “The learning community aims to accelerate the shared identification of priority areas for investigation and to facilitate more rapid implementation of innovative interventions to reduce OHCA response time.”
The 65 diverse stakeholders in the learning community–including OHCA survivors, 911 dispatchers, first responders, and physicians–have identified four critical themes for improving time to first treatment:
- Improve bystander response
- Increase public awareness of OHCA
- Reduce time-to-treatment and improve data collection for key process measures
- Improve post-cardiac arrest systems of care
The group, which will meet quarterly, is hosted by Emergent Health Partners, Huron Valley Ambulance, Livingston Emergency Medical Services, Michigan Medicine Department of Emergency Medicine, Michigan Medicine Department of Learning Health Sciences, SaveMiHeart, and the Washtenaw-Livingston Medical Control Authority.
Learning community leadership will be provided by Dr. Robert Domeier, director of the Washtenaw-Livingston Medical Control Authority; WHI member Emilee Coulter-Thompson, department strategist for the U-M Medical School Department of Learning Health Sciences; and SaveMiHeart executive director Teri Shields.
For more information or to join the work, contact LHS-OHCA-info@umich.edu.