WEMSIS Frequently Asked Questions

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What is the Washington Emergency Medical Services Information System (WEMSIS)?

The Washington EMS Information System, WEMSIS, is the state's prehospital data repository for electronic patient care records.

Why use WEMSIS?

Electronic prehospital data collection assists service, county, region and state efforts to monitor, evaluate and assess field experiences, patient care and the EMS system as a whole.

What does it cost me to participate in WEMSIS?

Access and submission to WEMSIS is free. In many cases, those services already using a vendor to collect electronic data can laterally submit their data to WEMSIS.

How do I participate in WEMSIS?

WEMSIS is a Web-based program. We provide many services access to a EMS/fire service account to begin collecting data electronically. Other services using their own NEMSIS Gold-compliant vendor laterally submit data to WEMSIS. Follow the three steps outlined below.

Can WEMSIS report both EMS and fire data?

Yes. Services around the state are using WEMSIS for both prehospital and National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS) data collection. Agencies may contact the Washington Fire Chiefs directly for assistance.

How do county medical program directors or destination hospitals access data in WEMSIS?

We developed additional access levels to accommodate and enhance such data exchange. A service may create access accounts for their medical program director (MPD) or a destination hospital at any time. Many services are currently benefiting from such partnerships in data exchange.

Which software vendors have an interface with WEMSIS?

As WEMSIS is based upon NEMSIS V2, vendors should possess NEMSIS Gold compliance. Follow this list for a list of NEMSIS Gold-compliant vendors. Some vendors may have NEMSIS Gold compliance; however, a NEMSIS/WEMSIS module has additional costs over the basic vendor software. Be sure to check with potential vendors for any additional costs that may be charged for a NEMSIS/WEMSIS module.

I currently use another vendor to collect data and I'm having issues exporting data to WEMSIS?

Many compatibility issues have been due to data validity. In data entry, the use of special characters (&, , ", and ') cause issues with data validity when exporting your data in XML format. Gold-compliance requires XML format functionality. As such, the only fix for such data issues is to either avoid special characters or use the following equivalents from the ampersand (&) to include the semicolon (;).

& = &

 

> = >

" = "

' = '