In 2006, FIREHOUSE Software was the first to earn gold compliance certification for submission of EMS patient records using the National NEMSIS submission guidelines and requirements. Since our initial commitment to NEMSIS, FH has enhanced all of our aspects of EMS incident and patient care recording to promote the new national reporting standard. General NEMSIS information is available here to keep everyone updated with the most current export definitions and news. State specific details available to us are accessible from unique State Information pages. The NEMSIS Technical Assistance Center maintains a progress report for all states at http://www.nemsis.org/support/stateProgressReports/index.html.
We recommend http://mcdc.missouri.edu/webrepts/commoncodes/ for your FIPS code needs.
Local or state agencies may require some NEMSIS fields which have been established as Pre-Defined (PD) user fields in FH 7. A list of the optional fields is available in the documentation section to assist departments in locating specific fields they may be required to use. Installation instructions for the PD user fields are included in the NEMSIS Implementation Instructions.
FIREHOUSE Software Administrative Options provide a NEMSIS export choice to export only data elements required for the national database. This feature was included to for departments submitting data directly to the national database, providing an additional tool for departments to follow their established HIPAA guidelines. Unfortunately, some state level NEMSIS incident requirements are removed from the NEMSIS patient export file if this feature is enabled. If your department is submitting NEMSIS patient information to a local or state agency, we recommend unchecking the option ‘NEMSIS – Export only data elements required for the national database.’ This feature is found under the Administration menu > Administrative Options > Incident Tab > EMS/Search & Rescue > State Reporting.
FIREHOUSE Software is committed to the collection of quality pre- hospital data and supporting our customers in meeting their local and state data reporting requirements. We are actively involved in NEMSIS 3 development and discussions over the past two years providing insight, feedback and participation in all of the NEMSIS TAC Version 3 developer meetings.
We have started the process to incorporate the NEMSIS V3.1 standard into our products and we look forward to becoming NEMSIS Version 3 compliant over the coming year. As we get closer to completion and certification we will release an implementation plan and schedule along with specific state version releases.