On-Demand Software Transforming Air Medical Transport Programs

Boardman, OH, March 31, 2008 --After several years in development and more than a year of initial trials, ThinkThroughTools has released its 365 Air Medical™ on-demand software to the air medical transport industry.

The customizable software is designed to help Air Medical Transport programs increase Safety, AMRM (Air Medical Resource Management), Customer-Centricity, Outreach Effectiveness and Referral Development. The software suite includes: 365 CriticalCUSTOMERCare™ (365 CCC), 365 Safety AMRM™, 365 AOLS™ (Advanced Outreach Life Support) and 365 OutreachU™.

This suite serves as a key recurrent training process for staff, according to Rich Obertots, CEO of ThinkThroughTools. Each day, crew members are provided learning lessons, scenarios and quizzes related to their duties—the process is intended to take less than 10 minutes to complete. It's integrated into each shift brief to assure daily consistency and to make it part of the daily culture and operations.

Three programs were selected by ThinkThroughTools and were provided special preference to help use, evaluate and adapt the initial version of the software during 2007: MedCenter Air (based at Carolinas Healthcare System, Charlotte, NC), Northwest MedStar (Spokane, WA) and LifeLine Critical Care Transport (based at Clarian Health in Indianapolis, IN).

"Based on the experience that I have had with Rich over the years, and the work that he did with our marketing and outreach efforts, I felt it was a good product and a good tool to augment what we're doing with our transport services," said Steve Johnson, Director of Business Development for Clarian Health.

Eveline Saltmarsh, Director of Northwest MedStar, said that her program started testing 365 Safety/AMRM last year.

"What sold me was the concept itself," she said. "We would always do our shift briefs and come up with the safety tip of the day. But it seemed that there could be more to it, and what Rich was working on seemed perfect for us. There was more meat to it. It included an actual scenario and it prompted discussion among the crew."

She also liked the fact that the software could be used daily.

"You do your AMRM once a year," she said. "You spend an entire day working on AMRM but many do not maintain as high of a focus on this the other 364 days a year. AMRM is supposed to be every day. Doing it only once a year but not maintaining high focus on it each day the rest of the year is not a good idea. With Rich’s solution, we can keep it fresh and alive daily."

365 Air Medical Productivity Tools

MedCenter Air has been using 365 CCC since launch trials from early 2007 and this past fall, asked ThinkThroughTools to customize and adapt it for its United Way campaign. MedCenter Air set a goal of 100 percent engagement of staff participating in the United Way.

Obertots customized 365 CCC to devote a week of lessons, scenarios, and quizzes to launch its campaign. Each day, all staff on duty, during their briefings, went through lessons about philanthropy and the United Way, and how this applied to their jobs.

"What better way to educate people than with the 365 scenarios that directly relate to the United Way versus trying to call a staff meeting together?" Jason Schwebach, Administrative Director of MedCenter Air said. "You can’t really relate to it in one day. We wanted to try to relate United Way to their jobs."

MedCenter Air has been using 365 since last February.

"One of the best things that the crew enjoys about it is that it came through on its promise," said Schwebach. "It’s a quick process to go through and it does what it was designed to do. This gives the crew an opportunity to do a scenario and then walk through it and talk about it with each other. It creates a very good discussion among the crew."

ThinkThroughTools daily monitors the industry for circumstances, events and relevant content that they can rapidly deploy into the system if there are any notices from the FAA or any incidence that occur.

"We can convert them into content and deploy it nationwide immediately," said Obertots. "We have a capacity for a rapid deployment of content that is relevant to the program. When any program has any incident that arises, we can take it and adapt it to a scenario."

ThinkThroughTools is working aggressively to include content that includes rotor wing, fixed wing and ground and content that links to accreditation standards. Although 365 testing is sufficiently complete, ThinkThroughTools plans to continue making modifications and using these three programs as the primary innovation sites for the new iterations.

"We have an on demand service that is effective that we now plan to deploy nationwide," said Obertots. "These programs were extremely helpful to provide us with input and we want to continue that process with them. We couldn’t have done this if we didn’t have complete candor and authentic feedback on what works and what is challenging and we want to maintain it."

About ThinkThroughTools: ThinkThroughTools is a professional services firm that provides outreach and marketing services and software for leading Air Medical Transport providers. Their primary focus is designing, implementing, managing and improving outreach and marketing operating systems. Their primary aim is to enable clients to safely generate sustainable medically necessary and appropriate flight requests. For more information, visit www.ThinkThroughTools.com. 

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