Cloverdale Health Care District - Ambulance

The Cloverdale Health Care District is amongst the BEST in the State and Nation for Cardiac Arrest Survival

Cardiac Arrest Registry to Enhance Survival (CARES)

The year 2021 data report from the CARES reporting project was received by the Cloverdale Health Care District.

The received report contained a side note from the CARES staff pointing to the Cloverdale Health CareDistrict Ambulance’s exemplary performance.

“Please find the 2021 CARES Annual Reports attached with a summary of the documents listed below. Please feel free to share these reports with any other staff that has helped contribute to CARES this past year.

I wanted to share with you that even though your numerator is very low you still have one of the highest survival rates with good neurological outcomes in the entire State of California!”

Joanne Chapman, RN
California State CARES Coordinator

Since the inception of the District in 1958, the Board of Directors has always placed a high priority on delivering superior patient care. From the early days of providing first aid with volunteers, through the years of providing an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) level of service with part-time and volunteer providers, to the inception of full-time Paramedic service in 1988, each progression provided expanded
patient-centered care.

The District along with our partner agencies, the Cloverdale Fire Protection District, Cloverdale Police Department, and Cal Fire, have worked together over many years to integrate response policy and procedures to help ensure positive outcomes for patients. Along with service delivery integration each department has invested in the equipment best suited for the delivery of effective care. Further, Cloverdale Health Care implemented a Cardiac Arrest Management (CAM) care protocol several years ago which identified care positions and assigned certain duties to them.  Aggressive treatment procedures and standardized care for cardiac arrest are designed to enhance the survivability of cardiac arrest patients within our response area.

This teamwork among agencies is directly reflected in the results published in the CARES report.

The CARES project- Participation in an OHCA-CARES registry enables communities to compare patient populations, interventions, and outcomes to identify opportunities to improve the quality of care and ascertain whether resuscitation is provided according to evidence-based guidelines. CARES was developed to help communities determine standard outcome measures for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) locally allowing for quality improvement efforts and benchmarking capability to improve care and increase survival.

The results are in for 2021 –

Cloverdale Health Care District- 29% Cardiac Arrest Survival rate able to be discharged from the hospital with intact cerebral function.

Sonoma County- 11% Cardiac Arrest Survival rate able to be discharged from the hospital with intact cerebral function.

State of California- 8% Cardiac Arrest Survival rate able to be discharged from the hospital with intact cerebral function.

National- 9% Cardiac Arrest Survival rate able to be discharged from the hospital with intact cerebral function.

The report/study also takes into account how a system works overall and tries to predict on a percentage basis the likelihood of success for an encountered cardiac arrest patient to have some level of return of cardiac function from prehospital care- the Utstein Survival.

Utstein Formula of Survival

The Utstein Formula for Survival is widely recognized as a way of predicting survival from sudden cardiac arrest. The model employs three elements in hypothesizing potential survival rates: Medical Science, Educational Efficiency, and Local Implementation.

Cloverdale Health Care District is scored at 60%
Sonoma County- 31%
State of California- 29%
National- 29%

By all measures, the greater Cloverdale Community, serviced by the Cloverdale Health Care District, Cloverdale Fire Protection District, Cloverdale Police Department, and Cal Fire perform exceptionally.

While death from Cardiac Arrest remains relatively high not only within the District but elsewhere, the odds of a better outcome within the District are high.

The District is very cognitive of this success and is constantly striving to be better. The District has invested in new ambulances, field equipment, and new cardiac diagnostic equipment. We are proud to be the first agency in Sonoma County to deploy a new cardiac monitor and defibrillator system from Philips Medical. The technology with the new cardiac monitor system allows real-time views across the
internet to hospitals and cardiologists. This ability allows the cardiac receiving facilities to see in real-time the patient's condition, Paramedic care, and evolving conditions. This ability should lower the diagnostic time in the emergency department and allows faster delivery of care to all patients and in particular those who are or have suffered a cardiac arrest.

The Board of Directors wishes to thank our exceptionally talented staff of Paramedics and EMTs, our partners – Cloverdale Fire Protection District, Cloverdale Police Department, and Cal Fire for their expertise and cooperation in patient care delivery.

CARES Project Homepage