By PlusTrac AED Management, Apr 30, 2018
So you already made the decision to take the advice of the American Heart Association (AHA), the American Red Cross and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and implement an automated external defibrillator (AED) program. You know that the AEDs need to be accessible and available for use within three to five minutes throughout your facility and that they need to be monitored and maintained so they are ready for use if ever needed.
Now the question is, “How do you assure that you have enough AEDs, that they are properly maintained, that there are persons available who are adequately trained to use them and that your company is compliant with state laws regarding AED use?” The second question may well be, “Is this something we want to do ourself, or should we incur the expense of partnering with an external agency and outsourcing this responsibility?”
Here are a few things to consider in response to those questions.
1. A good business strategy is to concentrate your internal assets on your core business. “Do what you do best and outsource the rest”.
2. Assure optimal readiness for use when needed. This Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) article, AEDs in the Workplace: Benefit or Burden?, addresses the fact that most AEDs are either not used at all, or may not be used for many years. During those years of non-use, many things can go wrong if they are not properly maintained.
3. Make sure that your staff is properly trained to use an AED. While the training for use may not be complex, it should be specific to heart health and sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) events and include physician oversight.
4. Assure compliance with AED laws in your state, or states, of operation. The laws regarding AEDs and their use are many and vary from state to state.
5. Share the legal liability risk. When outsourcing your AED management program you are sharing the risk of litigation with the AED management company. They don’t want to get sued any more than you do, so they are going to do everything necessary to avoid it.
Why take on these responsibilities by yourself when you can have a more experienced team do it in a cost-effective manner, saving your organization man hours, financial resources and providing additional peace of mind?
PlusTracâ„¢ is an interactive web-based AED program management system that makes it easy to keep your AEDs inspected, your consumables up to date, your volunteer responders trained, and all of your AEDs properly managed and ready for rescue.
In a world that is connected where you monitor your credit score and your home security system, why would you leave something like cardiac arrest to chance? Having a company monitor your readiness and compliance is the right choice for anyone who owns an AED.
