EMS workers using new tool allowing data exchange with hospitals
Sep 24, 2025, 8:04 PM | Updated: 8:13 pm
SALT LAKE CITY — Nearly 4,000 EMS workers in northern Utah now have access to follow-up reports on patients they were first to treat.
Most of the time, when EMS workers drop a patient off at the hospital, that’s the last time they see or hear of them, and it leaves a lot of them wondering what happened to that person.
CommonSpirit hospitals started using a new tool, helping medical providers communicate with each other.
“We interject ourselves in people and families’ worst times, and we do it over and over in a day. In a 48-hour shift, we may have 10 or 20 calls,” said Unified Fire Training Specialist Dan Biorge.
EMTs and paramedics are typically the first people to help in an emergency.
“You’ve put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into making sure this patient’s not only going to make it, but they’re going to recover and do well. And so it holds us accountable … where you’re seeing everything we’re doing, you’re seeing the patient’s outcome, and you’re seeing that, you know, you can trust us to have the best outcome for your patients,” said CommonSpirit Salt Lake EMS Coordinator Kyle Stewart.
But once they drop them off?
“Our providers are always left wondering what happened to that patient that I provided care on,” said UFA EMS Division Chief Rob Ayres.
Biorge said he still thinks about a patient he treated in the 1990s.
“He’d been feeling unwell for about a week … I took him to the hospital. I started an IV. Get all the vitals. They were stable. (He) just wasn’t feeling well. Low-grade fever. And then I called the next day … And he passed away … It was sepsis,” Biorge said.
He’s always wanted to know why.
To get more information on patients, EMS workers have to call nurses or doctors and often wait a long time to hear anything.
“It could take weeks to months to get feedback on it, to the point that sometimes we get feedback and we’d be like, ‘I don’t. I got to remember which patient this was,'” Stewart said.
To fix that, CommonSpirit hospitals started using a tool that allows EMS and ER workers to share data. It’s an online program called ESO Health Data Exchange, and it helps emergency rooms prepare for patients.
“They can see all of our EKGs, if we take pictures on the scene, and they can see our reports almost (in) real time,” Biorge said. “And so I can see how our patient is trending before they even arrive at their facility.”
Doctors share diagnoses, testing and their notes with EMS workers, which helps medical teams spot signs and symptoms.
“(We can say) ‘this is the diagnosis that I made in the field. And it perfectly aligned with what the doctor thought. The treatments that I performed in the field perfectly aligned with what the doctor needed done prior to them arriving at the hospital so that we could get them, you know, one or two steps ahead in treatment before they got to the hospital,'” Stewart explained.
They use it as feedback to improve patient care.
“If we’re continually missing something, then they can reevaluate their education and make it so that we’re not missing those things anymore,” Stewart said.
These first responders remember the difficult case.
“You never kind of get to close some of those chapters, and it’s always just kind of in the back of your mind,” Stewart said.
They’re hopeful that studying each other’s notes and treatment will lead to better outcomes for people needing their help.
“We’re pretty good at beating ourselves up. You know, when a patient trends downward on the way to the hospital and we can’t stabilize them or something, but just knowing that we are and what’s happening and ‘maybe I could do something next time’ just gives us motivation to keep improving and always learning,” Biorge said.
The only people who have access to these reports are the individuals who administered care to a patient. EMS providers can only see reports pertaining to that singular incident. They cannot see a patient’s entire medical history.
Contributing: Michelle Lee
