Supporting HHS’s Advancement of Emergency Medical Services for Children

Challenge

For over 30 years, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA) Emergency Medical Services for Children Program (EMSC) has improved Emergency Medical Services (EMS) systems throughout the country as part of its mission to reduce child and youth mortality and morbidity resulting from severe illness or trauma. HRSA EMSC provides grants to states, academic institutions, and pediatric emergency medical providers that work to ensure appropriate and high-quality services for the 30 million children who require emergency medical care each year. The program strives to improve emergency medical care for children along a continuum that includes injury prevention, disaster preparedness, pre-hospital care, hospital-based care, rehabilitation, and pediatric primary care. Given its success in the pre-hospital care setting, the program is investing additional efforts to ensure similar progress in the hospital-based care space, which will require the EMSC Program to balance a systems approach with a targeted investment in hospital pediatric emergency care. To achieve this, the EMSC Program needs a well-crafted strategy that will improve the performance of hospitals without undermining the gains made in pre-hospital pediatric care—all while continuing efforts to achieve the overall goal of improving emergency medical care for children along the entire continuum of care.

Solution

The HRSA EMSC collaborated with Atlas Research to develop a 5-year strategic plan for the EMSC Program. As part of this collaboration, the Atlas Team will assist the EMSC Program in identifying and rolling out key performance measures, developing white papers that promote the impact of the program, supporting a federal recognition collaborative to promote state-based pediatric readiness programs, facilitating the socialization and rollout of the strategic plan, and, importantly, engagin(HRSA)g the range of EMSC stakeholders along the way. 

To achieve success, the EMSC Program must identify a targeted path forward, articulate its approach to maximizing its investments, identify efficient evaluation methodologies to demonstrate impact, and leverage the influence and resources of its stakeholders to improve emergency care for children. Additionally, given its wide scope in an ever-changing health care environment, the EMSC Program must also understand and monitor forces influencing the program, such as political and legislative shifts, health market transformation, growth of emerging technologies, shifts in the health care workforce, and consumer preferences and expectations. 

Result

The Atlas Team’s strategic planning and stakeholder engagement are helping the EMSC Program build upon its past success, remain relevant in an ever-changing health care environment, and positively impact and advance the pediatric emergency medical system of the future.