Today Governor Dennis Daugaard announced a new project to improve cardiac care across the state with life-saving technology. South Dakota and North Dakota are the first states in the country to have this system to improve survival rates from cardiac arrest.
This initiative is being supported by a three point seven million dollar grant over the next three years from the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust. The grant will make it possible to place automated chest compression devices in every ground ambulance and emergency room across South Dakota. The grant also provides for training.
Doneen Hollingsworth is secretary of the Department of Health. She says the new machines will replace the work traditionally done with hands.
"It’s really another set of hands if you will but this set of hands won’t get tired will always do the compressions right," says Hollingsworth. "In the back of an ambulance on a bumpy road when the driver’s driving fast to get the patient to the hospital- the person that would’ve in the past had to use their own hands to do the chest compressions- now you’ll have an automated device doing that always right every time."
Hollingsworth says with the use of this equipment the EMTs can administer drugs, check airways, or monitor other vital signs. She says by next spring the devices will be delivered to hospitals and ambulances across the state.