Improving Patient Handoffs Through Strong EMS and Hospital Partnerships

When it comes to emergency medicine services, patient handoffs are one of the most critical moments. The transition of care from EMS to hospital staff and how smoothly it occurs can set the tone for patient outcomes, safety and efficiency. The process of improving EMS to ER patient handoff requires strong partnerships between EMS agencies and Missouri hospitals, ensuring everyone involved remains on the same page—providing a seamless and patient-centered experience.

For the Missouri Ambulance Association, building these partnerships between our EMS responders and local hospitals is especially important, considering the wide range of environments in which care is delivered—rural communities with limited resources, suburban communities a fair distance from a hospital, or high-volume urban emergency departments. Effective collaboration between EMS responders and hospitals begins first with mutual understanding—ensuring prehospital care providers and the receiving emergency department are aligned on key information, including:

• Detailed patient history

• Expectations of care

• Assessment of findings

• Treatments provided

• Shifts in condition 

By establishing a set of shared protocols and expectations between departments, the risk of error can be significantly reduced by ensuring that critical details are never overlooked. 

Ultimately, improving patient handoffs isn’t just about establishing a foolproof process—it’s about creating trust between both EMS and local emergency departments. When both prehospital care providers and hospitals clinicians view one another as partners, it leads to a variety of beneficial results, including:

• Smoother transitions

• Stronger teamwork

• Improved outcomes for patients

EMS and Missouri hospitals are stronger when they work together. That’s why we make it our priority to set up every EMS provider and hospital worker for success for the sake of their patients. 

Patient Handoff Best Practices

Effective handoffs are critical to ensure safe, high-quality emergency care. That’s why ensuring every patient handoff is well-executed is crucial to providing patients with essential care and ensuring that hospital staff are updated with the necessary information. Best practices for effective and well-managed patient handoffs include:

• Use a consistent set of procedures—following a set structure of care will help EMS providers provide their hospital staff partners with detailed and complete patient reports, even when in a rapidly-changing emergency situation.

• Communicate all critical information first—prioritize providing hospital staff with information pertaining to life-threatening conditions, notable changes in patient status, and other vital information first.

• Confirm reception of information—ensuring all care providers involved in the care of a patient are up-to-date on the information essential to their care is crucial. This can be supported by encouraging hospital staff to ask questions or verbally acknowledge that they have received the provided information and fully understand it. 

• Ensure documentation matches the verbal report—documenting and providing detailed patient care reports is vital to ensuring continuity of care after the handoff. It’s critical that the physical patient care report matches the verbal report provided at the handoff, so as to reduce the risk of inconsistencies, or medical errors like duplication of care. 

• Adapt handoffs as needed—depending on patient acuity the level of care may fluctuate between patients, requiring more detailed patient information. The structure of the handoff may need to be adjusted if a patient is in critical condition, however providing key information about the status of the patient and any other application information is vitally important. 

By utilizing these best practices, both EMS providers and hospital teams can provide a cohesive level of care for each patient and ensure that all essential information is provided and understood. 

The Importance of Consistent Prehospital To Hospital Care

Providing consistency in the shift between prehospital or hospital care is critical to ensuring safe and comprehensive patient care. When EMS providers and hospital teams abide by a shared set of expectations and processes, emergency patients have experienced fewer delays and greater continuity of care. Ensuring that both EMS providers and hospital staff are working together as a unit is crucial to ensure that key clinical details are being communicated, standardized processes are being followed and that both departments are effectively supporting one another to improve patient outcomes and support stronger clinical decision-making throughout the Missouri emergency care system.

Best Practices for EMS Hospital Partnerships

Strong and effective partnerships between EMS agencies and hospitals are built not only on trust, but also intentional communication, effectual collaboration, and shared expectations. Essential practices to establish a reliable partnership between these two emergency care providers includes:

• Joint training and education—any training programs the EMS agencies or local hospitals are participating in should include the participation of both entities, which will promote a deeper understanding of how to * communicate during calls and overcome challenges. 

• Establishing clear communication protocols—by outlining the defined points of contact and established communication procedures for emergency services providers to follow- greatly reduces the risk of confusion, medical error, and delays in care.

• Shared accountability—reinforcing a shared commitment to collaboration and effective patient care will ensure that the patient remains the priority and that both EMS providers and hospital staff are abiding by the establishing procedures. 

Building a strong working relationship between these two pillars of emergency care, can not only improve the process of patient handoffs, but also refine patient safety and outcomes.

Learn More About How Our Missouri EMS Services And Hospitals Work Together To Serve You

For more information on how our EMS providers partner with local hospitals across Missouri to provide patients with a comprehensive care experience, please visit our blog or contact us to learn more.