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- Do I have to use POLARIS?
- I'm not sure if my agency is ready to start using POLARIS. Is there a "sandbox" available for testing and evaluation?
- Is POLARIS HIPAA-compliant?
- What is a "call," and which calls do I have to report?
- My agency provides both fire and EMS services. What are you doing about duplicate reporting of fire and EMS calls?
- How do I record a blood pressure taken by palpation (for example, 120/p), if the NEMSIS standard only allows numbers for the blood pressure?
- How do I report non-certified personnel on a run, such as students, drivers, and medics-on-board?
Do I have to use POLARIS?
No. Since Utah is adopting a national prehospital dataset, you may use any NEMSIS-compliant software for data collection. Your agency will need to make a connection to POLARIS to upload your data to the Bureau.
Of course, we're working hard to develop POLARIS to meet the needs of most agencies. When considering whether to use POLARIS or other software, agencies should evaluate the costs and benefits of the other software compared to POLARIS. Since the Bureau owns POLARIS, POLARIS will always be available for agencies to use free of cost, but other software may be worth the cost to your agency if it provides substantial benefits that are not available in POLARIS.
Another alternative is to use POLARIS for some things and commercial software for others. For example, you could use commercial software for data collection and POLARIS's analysis suite for data analysis and reporting.
I'm not sure if my agency is ready to start using POLARIS. Is there a "sandbox" available for testing and evaluation?
Yes, the Bureau can grant you access to a sandbox area in POLARIS so that you can try out the system. Contact the Bureau to request access.
Is POLARIS HIPAA-compliant?
This is a two-part answer. First, as a state government, the bureau itself is exempt from HIPAA requirements. However, your agency may be regulated by HIPAA. To ensure privacy of patient data, access to POLARIS is managed on a person-by-person basis. Rather than having an "agency-wide" user account, each individual who uses POLARIS must have their own secured user account. All changes to data are audited, including identification of the user account used. The computer(s) you use to access POLARIS do not need to be secured any differently than other computers, since the computers themselves contain no data. All data is stored on the POLARIS servers, which are housed in physically-secured state facilities. Any computer connected to the Internet is capable of accessing POLARIS, if the user provides valid login credentials. If you have concerns about HIPAA compliance and you would like the bureau to help research the answers, please contact the bureau.What is a "call," and which calls do I have to report?
A separate Patient Care Report (PCR) must be completed for each unit response to each patient on each incident. For example, if the same unit responded to two patients in the same incident, two PCRs must be completed, documenting the care of each patient. Similarly, if two units provided care to the same patient during an incident, two PCRs must be completed, documenting the care given by each unit. POLARIS helps ease duplicate data entry by allowing the personnel completing the second PCR to "link" to the first PCR that was completed and auto-populate the data that would be common between the two PCRs.
All calls that are dispatched as EMS calls must be reported, including cancelled calls. Of course, it only takes a moment to report a cancelled call, as most of the data elements are not applicable. Calls that do not involve emergency medical services should not be reported. All licensed and designated agencies (agencies with service numbers ending in "L" or "D") are required to report their calls; EMS "agencies" with a service number ending in "N" do not need to report any activity under that service.
My agency provides both fire and EMS services. What are you doing about duplicate reporting of fire and EMS calls?
First, it is important to understand the data reporting requirements of the Bureau of Emergency Medical Services and the Office of the State Fire Marshall. Agencies are not required to report fire calls to the Bureau of EMS, and agencies are not required to report EMS calls to the Fire Marshall. Thus, the only calls that necessitate duplicate reporting are calls that involve both fire and EMS services on the same call. This type of call represents 0.2% of all EMS calls statewide handled by fire agencies. For 0.2% of your calls, you will have to report medical services data to the Bureau of EMS and firefighting data to the Fire Marshall.
To completely eliminate any duplicate reporting, your agency may consider purchasing software from a commercial vendor that is both NEMSIS-compliant and NFIRS-compliant. Any NEMSIS-compliant system can be used to fulfill EMS reporting requirements.
How do I record a blood pressure taken by palpation (for example, 120/p), if the NEMSIS standard only allows numbers for the blood pressure?
If the blood pressure was 120/p, you should enter "120" for the systolic blood pressure and leave the diastolic blood pressure blank. For greater detail, your agency can enable the NEMSIS element called "Method of Blood Pressure Measurement" (E14_06); then, you can choose "Palpated Cuff" in response to that element. In POLARIS, additional data elements can be enabled by using the "Configure Data Elements" page (available to agency data managers).
How do I report non-certified personnel on a run, such as students, drivers, and medics-on-board?
You can only report state-certified personnel in your agency as having been on the crew for a call. Any other people on the call who did not provide patient care do not need to be reported; for example, you do not need to report who the driver of the ambulance was unless the driver also provided patient care. If someone outside of your agency did in fact provide patient care (for example, a student or a medic-on-board), you will need to use the narrative to track this information. For example, if a medication was administered by a medic-on-board who is licensed as a physician but not as an EMT or paramedic, then the administration of the medication can still be recorded, but "Administered by" can be set to "not applicable;" then the narrative can be used to make note of the special case. (However, if the person has a Utah EMS ID, you can type it in to the "Administered By" field.)