Durham County EMS Nationally Recognized for its Commitment to Quality Care
Durham, N.C. – Durham County Emergency Medical Services (EMS) has received
the American Heart Association’s Mission: Lifeline® EMS Gold achievement award for its commitment to offering rapid and research-based care to people experiencing the most severe form of heart attacks and strokes, ultimately saving lives.
Emergency medical services staff can begin treatment when they arrive, up to an hour sooner than if someone goes to the hospital by car. EMS staff are also trained to provide resuscitation efforts to someone whose heart has stopped.
When someone goes into cardiac arrest in Durham County, they have a better chance of surviving than almost anywhere else in North Carolina or the United States. Based on the Cardiac Arrest Registry to Enhance Survival (CARES), in 2025, 16.3% of cardiac arrest patients treated by Durham County EMS survived to hospital discharge, compared to state and national averages of 11.7% and 10.5%. For patients in a shockable rhythm who received bystander CPR and/or placement of an AED, survival jumped to over 70%, more than double the state average of 33.6% and nearly double the national average of 37%.
“These numbers reflect a seamless chain of high-quality care, including 9-1-1 dispatchers identifying cardiac arrest and coaching bystanders through CPR, firefighters arriving first to begin treatment, and EMS providing advanced life support,” said Durham County EMS System Medical Director Dr. Anjni Joiner. “Every step in the chain of survival is critical to saving a life. By learning CPR, you can also do your part to save lives in our community.”
Mission: Lifeline EMS® is the American Heart Association's national initiative to advance the system of care for patients with high-risk, time-sensitive disease states, such as severe heart attacks and strokes. The program helps reduce barriers to prompt treatment, starting from when 911 is called, to EMS transport and continuing through hospital treatment and discharge. Optimal care for heart attack and stroke patients takes coordination between the individual prehospital providers and health care systems.
“Arguably the most important link in the chain of survival for acute stroke and cardiovascular emergencies is emergency medical services and prehospital professionals,” said Kacey Kronenfeld, M.D., FAEMS, chair of the American Heart Association's Mission: Lifeline EMS Taskforce. “Early condition identification, stabilization and prehospital interventions, and initiation of actions within the regional systems of care provide patients with the best chance for receiving expedient definitive therapies leading to optimal outcomes and maximized quality of life. The American Heart Association Mission: Lifeline EMS awards are an important way to recognize the crucial roles and performances of EMS personnel in stroke and cardiac patients’ care.”
The Mission: Lifeline EMS achievement award focuses on agencies’ on-scene care, bringing to the forefront the collaboration and contributions to patient care for prehospital providers.
“Durham County EMS is honored to receive recognition from the American Heart Association for 10 consecutive years, reflecting our unwavering commitment to delivering exceptional care for heart attack patients,” said Assistant Chief of Clinical Affairs Lee Van Vleet. “Our teams put evidence‑based guidelines into practice each day, so patients receive the fastest, most effective care possible to improve their chances of survival.”
About Durham County EMS:
Durham County EMS, a division of the Office of Emergency Services, provides high‑quality emergency medical response for the entire county. Our personnel operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, responding to more than 60,000 911 calls each year. In addition to emergency response, our Mobile Integrated Healthcare program deploys community paramedics who specialize in behavioral health and overdose-related calls. These clinicians work closely with field crews to connect patients with the most appropriate resources and support services.
About Mission: Lifeline
Mission: Lifeline EMS® recognition is the American Heart Association’s program that recognizes prehospital emergency agencies for their quality of care for heart attack and stroke patients. The recognition program focuses on transforming care quality by connecting all heart attack and stroke care components into a seamlessly integrated care system. Key tenets of these systems of care reinforce evidence-based guidelines and measure performance, identify gaps, and engage in quality improvement.
For more information, visit heart.org.
About The Cardiac Arrest Registry to Enhance Survival (CARES)
Each year, approximately 350,000 persons in the United States experience an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) or sudden death; approximately 90% of persons who experience an OHCA die. Despite decades of research, median reported rates of survival to hospital discharge are poor (10.4%) and have remained virtually unchanged for the past 30 years. Without a uniform and reliable method of data collection, communities cannot measure the effectiveness of their response systems, nor can they assess the impact of interventions designed to improve OHCA survival. Participation in an OHCA registry enables communities to compare patient populations, interventions, and outcomes with the goal of identifying opportunities to improve quality of care and ascertain whether resuscitation is provided according to evidence based guidelines. CARES was developed to help communities determine standard outcome measures for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) locally allowing for quality improvement efforts and benchmarking capability to improve care and increase survival.
For more information, visit https://mycares.net/index.jsp.
Learn CPR:
Durham County Public Health - CPR Courses
American Heart Association - CPR Courses
American Red Cross - CPR Courses
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