Videos From Expo: Sharing Outcomes Data in Utah

When Brooke Burton, NRP, quality director for Gold Cross Ambulance in Salt Lake City, Utah, approached area hospitals with the idea of sharing data in the interest of tracking her patients’ outcomes, she met resistance at every turn.

“My journey was long and difficult,” said Burton, whose service covers multiple areas of Utah with 100 ambulances and over 500 providers and support staff. “Doors closed for me.”

Undeterred, Burton learned of the Utah State Community Health Information Exchange (cHIE), a voluntary, federally grant-funded program whereby hospitals participate in bidirectional data exchange to track patient outcomes. Through this program, Burton was able to circumvent resistance at the hospital level.

“I was able to bypass the hospital door shut in my face and get the outcomes back from cHIE that I had been looking for that whole time,” she said. “That was huge for us.”

Burton described how the process works from both a provider and manager’s view during the Data & Technology Summit at EMS World Expo 2017 in Las Vegas. View the video here.