Essentia Health's EMS Care Wins Awards from American Heart Association

Hard work pays off: In recognition of their success in offering rapid care to patients experiencing the most severe form of heart attacks and strokes, the American Heart Association (AHA) has presented five Mission: Lifeline EMS Bronze achievement awards to Essentia Health. The awards were won by the healthcare provider’s EMS teams in Deer River, Detroit Lakes, Fosston, Moose Lake, and Sandstone, all in Minnesota.

Essentia has about 170 skilled EMS professionals serving patients in Minnesota, North Dakota, and Wisconsin. Mission: Lifeline EMS is the AHA’s national initiative to improve care for patients with high-risk, time-sensitive disease states, such as severe heart attacks and strokes. Its goal is to support prompt treatment for these patients from the time that 9-1-1 is called through EMS transport, hospital treatment and discharge.

“This is the first year that we won these awards,” said Dr. Christopher Anderson, Essentia Health Associate Chief Medical Officer, and Minnesota Primary Care Division Chair. “The Bronze achievement award is the highest you can win in your first year, so we're very proud of our staff’s achievement. It really shows their dedication to caring for patients with heart attacks and strokes and shows their focus on quality of care.”

To win this award, Essentia’s EMS agencies had to submit documents detailing their progress in administering heart attack and stroke care across seven metrics.

“For a heart attack, the three metrics they look at are 12-lead ECGs performed within 10 minutes for suspected heart attack, aspirin administration for STEMI-positive ECGs, and pre-arrival notification less than or equal to 10 minutes for STEMI-positive ECGs,” Anderson told EMS World. “We met at least 75% for each of those measures in the calendar year.

“For a stroke, there are four things they look at: There's pre-arrival notification for suspected stroke. There's documentation of last known symptoms for patients with suspected stroke, evaluation of blood glucose for patients with suspected stroke and a stroke screen performed and documented. We did that for at least 75% of our stroke patients in each of the four quarters for the 2024 calendar year. I should add that you have to have at least one STEMI patient and one stroke patient in each quarter to qualify.”

Getting to this level of performance required hard work by Essentia’s personnel.

“One of the first things you have to do is make sure you can capture the required data,” Anderson said. “We had to make some changes to our EPCR to make sure it prompted our EMS clinicians to document each of those things. We also did a lot of training around this. We do an annual skills day where we look at care for heart attack and stroke patients, and we do ongoing education on these topics. As well, Essentia allows our EMS clinicians to have access to as many therapies in the field that we can, and to carry all of the meds that they need.”

Having won five AHA Bronze medals this year, Essentia is aiming to improve its performance next year. “That is always our objective, to continuously enhance the care we bring to our patients,” Anderson said. “This recognition from the AHA reflects the fact that we’re moving in the right direction. And that’s the real value in receiving these kinds of prestigious awards, knowing that we’re doing everything we can to support those who entrust us with their care.

“I’m extremely proud of our EMS teams as they continually strive to provide the highest quality pre-hospital care,” added Joe Newton, Essentia’s Senior Director of EMS. “These AHA awards are an acknowledgement of their hard work and dedication to our rural patients and the communities that we're privileged to be serving.”