NS Grant - Acceptance of 2008 EMS Toolkit Grant

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ORANGE COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS ACTION AGENDA ITEM ABSTRACT Meeting Date: October 9, 2007 Action Age Item No. SUBJECT• Application and Acceptance of 2008 EMS Toolkit Grant DEPARTMENT: Emergency Services PUBLIC HEARING: (YIN) No ATTACHMENT(S): INFORMATION CONTACT: Grant Application Packet Clint Osborn, 968-2050 PURPOSE: To approve the application after the fact and approve any eventual acceptance of the 2008 EMS Toolkit Grant from the North Carolina Office of Emergency Medical System NCOEMS) to help support the County EMS data implementation system project. BACKGROUND: On May 15, 2007, the Board approved a bid award to Zoll Data Systems to implement an electronic patient care reporting system in the amount of $171,991. The Zoll data system is for software only and the project has been augmented by approximately another $100,000 in County capital improvement funds for corresponding hardware, making this a major $277,000 initiative for Orange County Emergency Services. Recently, the North Carolina Office of EMS opened up the 2008 Toolkit Grant program to support new and existing initiatives at the county level that focus on the improvement of EMS system response times based on the capture of data points from the NCOEMS Prehospital Information Management System (PreMIS). Initially, Orange County Emergency Services staff believed that Orange County EMS was ineligible because of historically insufficient data capture owing to the current manual records and data capture system. However, ongoing discussion with representatives of NCOEMS indicates that, given the thrust of the overall project (the Zoll data system above and this current request) to improve electronic data entry, as well as to leverage the financial support against an existing implementation, Orange County can and should apply for this grant. Given the initial uncertainty over eligibility and a short turnaround deadline of September 28, 2007, Orange County applied for the grant without initial Board approval in order to continue the process of application while further investigating the opportunity to utilize further funding to support this important ongoing project. However, should the Board choose to discontinue the application process, Emergency Services staff will withdraw the application in writing to the NCOEMS.