Quality assurance method for a care delivery system

• US 5,674,252 A
• Filed: 08/02/1996
• Issued: 10/07/1997
• Est. Priority Date: 09/28/1994
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Koninklijke Philips N.V.
• Original Assignee: Heartstream, Inc. (HP Inc.)
• Inventors: Powers, Daniel J., Morgan, Carlton B., Cole, Clinton
• Primary Examiner(s): Kamm, William E.
• Application Number:
  US08/691,975
• Time in Patent Office: 431 Days
• Field of Search: 607/5, 364/413.02, 364/128, 364/920
• US Class Current: 607/5
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/333 Recording apparatus specially adapted therefor
• CPC Class Codes: A61N 1/3904 External heart defibrillators [EHD]
• CPC Class Codes: A61N 1/39044 in combination with cardiopulmonary resuscitation [CPR] therapy
• CPC Class Codes: G01D 3/02 with provision for altering or correcting the law of variation
• CPC Class Codes: G01D 9/005 Solid-state data loggers
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 15/00 ICT specially adapted for medical reports, e.g. generation or transmission thereof
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/63 for local operation

Abstract

A method for gathering event data using a data gathering instrument having an instrument clock and an instrument data storage medium, the method comprising the steps of: gathering event data using the data gathering instrument; storing the event data in an instrument data storage medium; using an instrument clock to associate time information with the event data; storing the associated time information in the instrument data storage medium; separating the instrument data storage medium from the data gathering instrument; separating the instrument clock from the data gathering instrument; and storing in a main data storage medium the event data and the time information stored in the instrument data storage medium. The invention also includes a data gathering system practicing this method, the data gathering instrument itself, and removable instrument clock and memory modules, preferably disposed together in a housing such as a PCMCIA format card.

Claims

1. A quality assurance method for a care delivery system comprising the following steps:

dispatching a defibrillator to treat a patient;

deploying the defibrillator to gather event data;

using a clock connected to the defibrillator to associate time information with the event data;

separating the clock from the defibrillator;

recovering in a main data recovery unit the event data and time information; and

using the time information to assess care delivery system performance.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the using step comprises calculating time between an external event and use of the defibrillator to treat the patient.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein the calculating step comprises calculating time between dispatch of the defibrillator and use of the defibrillator to treat a patient.

4. The method of claim 1 further comprising comparing the clock with a clock in the main data recovery unit.

5. The method of claim 4 further comprising correcting the time information for time drift.

6. A quality assurance method for a care delivery system comprising the following steps:

dispatching a plurality of defibrillators to treat a plurality of patients;

deploying the defibrillators to gather event data;

using clocks connected to each defibrillator to associate time information with the event data gathered by the defibrillators;

separating the clocks from the defibrillators;

recovering in the main data recovery unit the event data and time information gathered by each defibrillator; and

comparing the clocks with the clock in the main data recovery unit.