Colleges & Associations

Emergency Health Services

College of Paramedics
Registration Database System

Customer Profile

Emergency Health Services (EHS) of Nova Scotia, a division of the Department of Health, is responsible for the continual development, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of pre-hospital emergency health services in the province. Striving to be the centre of excellence in emergency health services, EHS assures best practices in pre-hospital emergencies and emergency preparedness to the communities it serves through regulation, prevention, education, and research. The EHS has gone through some significant transformations over recent years such as attaining a new fleet of ambulances and staffing the new fleet with registered paramedics. Furthermore, a training and simulation centre was created; one that provides a variety of health professionals with realistic and challenging educational opportunities that sharpen skills, enhance knowledge and most importantly, improve patient care. Currently responsible for registering and re-registering paramedics in Nova Scotia, EHS is also in the process of establishing the new College of Paramedics of Nova Scotia (CPNS). Subsequently, the CPNS will then become responsible for the registration process.

Business Situation

Since the CPNS is not yet in operation, EHS paramedics and former Nova Scotia College of Paramedics executives are working cooperatively to develop policies, practices and draft regulations to submit to the Nova Scotia government for approval. The EHS is hoping to have this accomplished by early 2008. In order for everything to come together, the EHS understood that they would have to somehow combine all the existing active paramedics' information from their old system and integrate it into a new sustainable emergency system that met all their new requirements. Their old system did not keep any historical information, so old information was overwritten with each re-registration. Also, it would have required a lot of external system maintenance for new requirements or certifications to be implemented. Re-registration of paramedics is currently due every two years and there is no cost to the paramedic. Paramedics are responsible for sending the registrar the required documentation to receive their certification which allows them to work in Nova Scotia. This process requires a lot of work by the registrar to determine if all the requirements have been fulfilled by the paramedic. Furthermore, the new requirements will be quite different than what is currently required for certification.

Solution

Once the CPNS begins operations, there will be new requirements for certification of paramedics. The new rules will only apply to new or re-registrants and any existing members will still follow the old rules of registration. Nicom was appointed to develop the College of Paramedics Registration Database System. One of the main requirements of the new system was that it be online so as to enable the paramedics to log in and maintain their own information. The new system has replaced their existing application and allows for the addition of the new College Of Paramedics certification requirements. With the help of Nicom, everyone will be registered under these new requirements within two years of the college opening.

Nicom IT Solutions not only built the Registration Database System, but the College of Paramedics web site to go along with it! This web site is at:

http://www.cpns.ca/

Benefits

The enhancements made possible through Nicom decreases the amount of work required by the registrar by allowing the paramedics web access to their information. Additional functionality has been built into the new system that allows users to log data changes, keep track of user activity, keep historical data, print ID cards, and keep track of applicants. Furthermore, the new system allows for many types of reports to be readily available. Nicom has taken the necessary steps to ensure that this has been a smooth transition for EHS.

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