EMS: Cardiac Arrest Registry to Enhance Survival (CARES)
Approximately 90% of people who have a cardiac arrest outside of a hospital die.
Despite decades of research, survival rates to hospital discharge are poor (10.4%) and have remained virtually unchanged for the past 30 years. To improve survival rates, the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), in collaboration with Emory University, launched CARES—the Cardiac Arrest Registry to Enhance Survival in 2014.
How CARES works
- Communities that join CARES commit to entering cardiac arrest data from EMS agencies and hospitals into a national database to track their performance confidentially over time and improve the quality of patient care.
- CARES provides an infrastructure to streamline the data collection process for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA). In doing so, CARES participants can increase cardiac arrest survival in their community by benchmarking their performance to identify opportunities for quality improvement.
- CARES is the only national registry in collaboration with the CDC and provides reports at agency, state, and national levels for easy analysis and comparison.
Get involved in CARES
Enrollment is easy and free. Since 2020, the American Red Cross has been a proud supporter of the CARES Program by offsetting the state enrollment fee making CARES free to EMS providers and hospitals in Wisconsin. EMS agencies and hospitals can join in as little as 30 minutes.
Visit MyCares.net or email your state coordinator Shawna.Macauley@redcross.org to learn more.
To see if your local EMS agency is enrolled, see the Wisconsin participation map.
Why CARES matters
By joining CARES, communities gain more than just access to information that will help them improve performance and save lives. They also contribute to one of the largest EMS registries in the world, and one of the few that also includes patient outcome information from hospitals. Those features enable CARES data to be used to conduct vital research that furthers our knowledge of cardiac arrest treatment and saves countless lives for years to come.
See the CARES survivors impact video.
Who does cardiac arrest affect?
Sudden cardiac arrest can affect anyone, anywhere, at any time—a 12-year-old girl in a school classroom, a 31-year-old father jogging in the park, a 60-year-old grandmother at home with her family. Each year, approximately 350,000 people in the United States experience a cardiac arrest outside of a hospital or sudden death.
That’s where CARES can make a difference. CARES helps communities measure performance and identify how to improve cardiac arrest survival rates.
Learn more about CARES and how to save a life
- See national level data in the CARES Annual Report 2022
- Find Basic Life Support/CPR classes near you, sign up, and learn to save a life.
- For more ways to get involved or help others in need, visit the American Red Cross website to find even more opportunities to make a difference.
CARES in Action
See stories of lives affected by CARES in Action (PDF)
CARES success stories
From CARES Annual Report 2022 page 19
Beginning in 2020, Dane County EMS (DCEMS) worked to achieve their goal to be a national leader in cardiac arrest resuscitation and survival. DCEMS continued this pursuit by implementing the Cardiac Arrest Summary Initiative. These High-Performance CPR Summaries provide detailed feedback to crews from cardiac arrest incidents focusing on high-performance CPR (HPCPR) metrics identified as core measures for maximizing outcomes.
DCEMS created four metrics for improvement and were able to use CARES data to show improvement in each category. Improvement in each of these categories helps to increase chance of survival in the event of a cardiac arrest.
For the complete story please see the Dane County EMS High-Performance CPR Summary June 2020 - December 2022
From CARES Annual Report 2020 page 15
Minnesota was able to achieve significant early success by promoting awareness of CARES. In 2013 Minnesota launched a “Know Your Numbers” campaign and shared data with State and national metrics to every EMS and first responding agency in the state. This resulted in a high rate of participation from EMS and Hospitals in submitting data in the CARES dataset. In Minnesota, 85% of the population lives in areas where their local EMS and hospitals participate in CARES.
In 2018 the University of Minnesota in partnership with the health systems of the Twin Cities and greater Minneapolis-St. Paul region sought to create a collaborative program with Helmsley Charitable Trust to provide 24/7 mobile life support services to patients suffering from an OHCA. This partnership was able to result in a $19.5 grant that was used to establish the Minnesota Mobile Resuscitation Consortium (MMRC).
Using CARES data the goal of MMRC was to increase survival rates for OHCA patients found in a shockable rhythm from 40% to 65% in a seven-year timeframe by providing extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) life support within 40 minutes of the initial 911 call.
The first phase implemented by MMRC to achieve this goal specialized teams consisting of physicians, nurses, and EMS providers were created that were now able to be deployed using “chase vehicles” to provide high level care in local emergency departments. The next phase for MMRC to reach their goal included a truck that is equipped with state-of-the-art medical equipment and virtual technology to help tend to patients remotely. This program with specialized personnel and equipment meant they could now essentially bring the emergency room services to cardiac patients who need to be placed on ECMO. Ultimately, location will no longer be a barrier to survival with the truck and virtual technology in full implementation.
“Having CARES allowed us to pursue such a pivotal project with Helmsley because we had baseline OHCA metrics and the ability to assess the impact of the intervention and investment of the project” - Kim Harkins, Program Manager at the Center for Resuscitation Medicine in the University of Minnesota.
See the ECMO response truck an learn more about the Minnesota Mobile Resuscitation Consortium here.
From CARES in Action – Summer 2018
At the time Las Vegas joined CARES only 5% survived to hospital discharge. Using CARES as a vehicle for change, they began working on systematically strengthening each of the five links in the AHA’s chain of survival. They addressed the first and third links (early 911 and early advanced care). Through CARES, they were able to see the direct effect of high-quality CPR, delayed intubation and therapeutic hypothermia had on survival rates.
CARES data served as a driving force for Las Vegas community hospitals to begin using optimal post-resuscitation care (therapeutic hypothermia, etc.). Their survival increased from 5% over previous years and improved survival rates that are now in the 30% range.
From CARES in Action – Summer 2018
Participating in CARES has led El Paso County to a resurgence in interest in CPR training for the public by EMS and local hospitals, as well as a peer emphasis on high quality EMS provider intervention both on scene and in transport. The resultant focus on improving cardiac arrest outcomes led to the momentum to establish therapeutic hypothermia protocols within all four of their area hospitals, as well as their busiest EMS agencies.