Recognizing the increasing important of the patient experience in healthcare, for the past three years MedStar has contracted with the EMS Survey Team (EMSST) to conduct a comprehensive, fully external assessment of our patient's experience.

This assessment is done completely external to MedStar.  We upload our complete patient contact file each month to the EMSST, who randomizes the data and conducts the surveys without any MedStar involvement.  The results from the survey are provided to us in several formats each month by the EMSST.

In September 2015 we reached the milestone of over 2,500 completed patient surveys, which provides us a statistically reliable data set to accurately report our patient’s perspectives on key metrics such as:

- Concern shown by the medics caring for the patient
- Skill of the medical personnel
- Dispatch processes and pre-arrival medical instructions
- Extent to which the medical personnel kept the patients/families informed and involved in treatment decisions
- Helpfulness of the business office staff
- Overall rating of value

The EMSST also conducts these types of surveys for over 90 other EMS providers across the U.S.  This robust database provides a comparative benchmark for MedStar to use as a measure to determine how we rate compared to all other agencies in the EMSST database.

We are exceptionally pleased to report that for all comparable agencies in the EMSST database, EMSST reports that MedStar had the highest scores of any agency for the following survey responses:

Question                                                                                        Percentile

Helpfulness of the person you called for emergency service                         93.2

Concern shown by the person you called for emergency service                  94.1

Extent to which you were told what to do until help arrived                         93.8

Extent to which the medics kept you informed                                           93.7

Extent to which medics included you in the treatment decisions                  94.4

Appropriateness of emergency medical treatment                                      93.9

Medics' concern for your privacy                                                               93.7

Cleanliness of the ambulance                                                                   94.3

Comfort of the ride                                                                                 89.6

Professionalism of the staff in our billing office                                          93.3

Willingness of the staff in our billing office to address your needs               90.0

How well our staff worked together to care for you                                    93.7

Extent to which the services received were worth the fees charged             91.4

Overall rating of the care provided by our team                                         94.1

Click here to view the full summary

Click here to view the EMSST Report through October 2015