b'142021 CARES Annual Report including coronary angiography, CABG, and stent or ICDtraining from CARES staff on the data elements, data placement.collection process, and features of the CARES website. The CARES dataset is geocoded on an annual basis andThis training includes a one-on-one session with a CARES linked to a number of census-tract level variablesProgram or State Coordinator prior to being granted including: median household income, median age, raceaccess to the software. EMS and hospital users are also and ethnicity, unemployment rate, poverty status,provided with numerous resources, including a detailed urbanicity, and educational attainment.CARES data dictionary and a CARES user guide. Once a community has been participating in the registry for an Reporting Capability extended period of time, CARES provides ongoing support in the form of answering questions as needed, The CARES software includes functionality to automateproviding updated training documents, and responding data analysis for participating EMS agencies. The reportsto individual reporting requests. include 911 response intervals, delivery rates of criticalSoftware Logic and Auditing interventions (i.e. bystander CPR, dispatcher CPR, public access defibrillation [PAD]), and community rates ofIn order to provide consistent data validation across the survival using the Utstein template. An EMS agency hasregistry, each CARES record is reviewed for continuous access to their data and can generatecompleteness and accuracy through an automated audit reports by date range at their convenience. Thealgorithm. Once the record is processed by the software is also capable of aggregate reporting allowingalgorithm, data entry errors are flagged for review by CARES staff to generate custom reports forEMS and hospital users (as appropriate) and CARES staff. benchmarking and surveillance purposes. In addition,Logic and error messages are also incorporated into the hospitals have access to facility-specific reports,data-entry form to minimize the number of incomplete allowing users to view pre-hospital and in-hospitalfields and implausible answer choices during the data characteristics of their patient population withentry process. Finally, aggregate data is analyzed on a benchmarking capability. A robust query feature alsoregular basis to identify agency-specific anomalies. allows agencies and hospitals to create customizedCARES staff utilize site-by-site comparison tools to searches of their data. These search results can be easilydetect outliers and compare each agencys data with the exported to Microsoft Excel for further analysis.national average.Data ValidationCase AscertainmentThe CARES quality assurance process is one of theEach EMS agency is asked to confirm their non-strengths of the registry, as a number of measures aretraumatic call volume to ensure capture of all arrests in taken to ensure the integrity and accuracy of the data.a defined geographic area. The volume of OHCA per These measures include standardized training of allmonth is compared with historic monthly volumes by CARES users, built-in software logic, an audit algorithmCARES staff; when a substantial drop in the number of ensuring consistent data validation across the registry,events occurs, the EMS contact is notified to determine and a bi-annual assessment of population coverage andif the variation was real or the result of a lag in the data-case ascertainment.entry process. In addition, CARES conducts a bi-annual assessment of population coverage and case Training, Education, and Support ascertainment. CARES staff and State Coordinators Training, education, and ongoing technical andprovide each EMS agencys geographic coverage, census operations support are key components of CARES thatpopulation, and start date via a standardized template. contribute to the registrys success and enhance theThis information is then linked with record volume to experience for participating sites. During the enrollmentidentify outliers across the entire registry. In the event process, EMS and hospital users receive extensivethat an outlier is found, CARES staff or the State Coordinator works closely with the EMS agency to identify any issues in the data collection process and resolve as needed.'