Annuvia Launches International AED Consulting Practice

SAN FRANSISCO, CA – While AED defibrillator units (Automated External Defibrillators) are growing in popularity on an international basis, organizations have few opportunities to hire global consultative services to help with AED unit selection and implementation. Purchasing an AED unit in the United States is typically easy and can even be done over the internet. To ensure regulatory compliance, owners merely need to monitor local laws that commonly contain elements such as CPR/AED training requirements, maintaining AED unit prescriptions, and properly documenting AED unit “readiness” checks on a 30-day basis. International deployment, however, can be much more challenging.

“Organizations of all sizes across the country have done the right thing in acquiring AED units for their offices,” states Micah Bongberg, President of Annuvia, a national provider of CPR, AED and First Aid training services, “but they’re finding it increasingly difficult to provide the same level of care for their employees who are located at their international locations.”

Global businesses realize that sudden cardiac arrest doesn’t just happen in the United States, yet the maze of import and export laws, coupled with the unique differences in AED-related statutes from countries across the world, make doing the right thing difficult.
“Rather than accepting the status quo and only providing life-saving protection for an organization’s domestic employees, Annuvia has elected to add a new practice, focused on providing International AED Consulting services to businesses of all sizes. Our hope is to help large, global businesses navigate the maze of international regulations, in an effort to help them implement system-wide programs – for all of their employees,” states Bongberg.

Annuvia’s International AED Consulting practice will offer several customized service offerings, including: negotiating with international AED distributors, preparing quotes and ordering equipment, conducting virtual site assessments, ensuring customs clearance, and researching CPR & AED training requirements as well as country-specific AED-related laws on their clients’ behalf. As a distributor for the leading AED unit manufacturers and national provider of CPR/AED and First Aid training services, Annuvia is able to offer a unique, first-hand perspective that is currently non-existent for large, global organizations.

To learn more about Annuvia’s new International Consulting Practice, contact Annuvia at: info@annuvia.com

Annuvia Applies Defibrillator to Hunger

Annuvia’s mission of creating healthier, safer, more prepared communities is not limited to only providing CPR and AED classes and first aid training. Annuvia holds regular volunteering opportunities for its employees as part of the organization’s Social Responsibility Plan. Causes range from the environment and recycling, to pro-bono safety training services and hunger. Just two weeks back, Annuvia’s Operations Team applied a massive, multi-volunteer, defibrillation “shock” to hunger. Working in partnership with the San Francisco Food Bank, staff from Annuvia’s headquarters location volunteered first thing in the morning on Saturday, February 6, 2010 and didn’t stop until the pallets of food no longer rolled in for re-packaging.

When the volunteers arrived they walked in to an enormous warehouse stocked full of fresh fruit and vegetables. Carrots and grapefruit were literally stored in giant cardboard boxes and the task was to separate and box the produce into smaller, more portable, boxes for distribution throughout the community. Working in unison, Annuvia’s staff devised a strategy and appointed positions to quickly handle the flood of healthy food. Soon, the music was turned on and the event was turned into a contest!

Annuvia is always looking to strengthen our relationship with like-minded organizations and we’re fortunate to be located in the heart of San Francisco, near many of the country’s leading organizations. If you or your organization would like to learn more about Annuvia’s Corporate Social Responsibility Plan or partner with Annuvia on their next, up-coming volunteer activity, send an email to Annuvia at info@annuvia.com with details on how you’d like to help.

Risk Reduction = Premium Reduction

Converse to the usual insurance company policy of increasing premiums for riskier drivers, some employers are now offering to reduce health insurance premiums for employees that take steps to reduce their individual risk for illness. Literally. Virgin Airlines is among these companies. This employer has issued pedometers to interested employees to track the number of steps taken each day. Those meeting previously set goals will find the rewards in their pay checks as well as on the bathroom scales and in increased wellness.

Although a pilot program now, Virgin hopes to reduce its annual health care premiums and pass the savings on to the employees choosing a healthier lifestyle. Currently all employees of most companies are charged the same premiums for the same levels of coverage regardless of lifestyle choices. It has been argued elsewhere effectively that it is easier to choose a healthy lifestyle than it is to attempt to medicate a way out of poorly made choices. Unsaid is that it is also much less expensive for the insurance company, too.

Arguably more money invested in employee wellness will be returned in the form of higher productivity, fewer days off the job, and lower insurance premiums. Passing the difference along to eligible employees will encourage worker buy in and encourage those reluctant to take steps toward wellness to start with small goals. This appears to be the ultimate win-win situation for workers and employers alike.

How Much Caution Is Too Much?

Anthony Troupe, Jr., 13, collapsed in the third week of August on a St. Louis high school football field while running laps before football practice. Unfortunately, this story does not have a happy ending. Inspite of heroic CPR attempts, Anthony died of a sudden cardiac event related to a previously undiagnosed heart problem. He had passed his mandatory sports physical shortly before, but that physical did not include any sort of EKG heart testing. In Anthony’s case, there was a family history of heart disease evidenced by his father’s sudden death at the age of 45 after working a night shift in April, 2007.

Could Anthony’s life have been saved if a EKG test was a requirement prior to playing prep sports? There are an estimated 7 million high school athletes in the United States; should every one be tested for subtle heart defects that could potentially cause cardiac arrest during strenuous sports? In Italy, there is a national screening program that is credited with lowering the incidence of sudden cardiac death among young athletes. Can such a program be attempted in the much bigger United States with the same results? Should it?

Perhaps the answer does not lie in an all or nothing approach. Bruce Whitehead, the executive director of the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association of middle and high school athletic directors, believes that such tests are indicated when a student athlete’s background indicates the presence of heart disease. This middle ground would no doubt catch undiagnosed heart conditions in a number of cases, but there will still be some victims with no known risk factors. Perhaps the parents of all student athletes should be given the information and the statistics and make their own informed decisions about whether to test or not. An unnecessary EKG would be far better than living with the pain of losing your child the way Anthony’s mother lost him.

Healthy Schools: Wellness and AED units

Many column inches in the daily newspapers have been devoted lately to increasing the nutritional value of the food offerings in our public schools. Like it or not, nearly all of America’s students eligible for free or reduced school lunch programs now eat both breakfast and lunch at school. Effectively, the American taxpayer is responsible for two thirds of the students’ daily nutrition. This is a significant charge for all of us and the fact that we are not doing very well by these children and young adults was recognized recently by 250 nation-wide “eat-ins.” In many areas these well organized “slow food” events did encourage people to think about the possibility of offering more local, fresh ingredients to our students on a daily basis. Certainly, wellness is a topic deserving mush more media attention. Unlike reactive solutions like prescription drugs, emergency treatment options, and health insurance overhauls, or preventative techniques like health screenings, cholesterol testing, or colonoscopies, wellness is a solution to train individuals to make positive, transformative, life-altering decisions – forever.

But what of a more pressing and immediate health issue; that of sudden cardiac arrest, an interruption in the normal heart rhythm, taking the lives of 7,000 to 10,000 school children each year. What about an organized “heart-in” in which cardiac screenings, CPR training, and AED Defibrillator instruction would be available for all student athletes? Of course a healthy diet is desirable, but a healthy heart is much more immediately necessary for any student engaging in vigorous physical activity.

Why limit CPR and AED training to the adults in charge of youth sports? The students themselves are much more likely to work out with peers on and off the field, thus far more likely to be closer to a victim in a sudden cardiac emergency than is the coach or referee or even the paramedic assigned to the event, if there is one.

Preparedness could easily be as much a part of sports training as are the ubiquitous push ups and crunches. The audience is already there and willing to be instructed. Because of the nature of the leisure time activities in which this age group engages, the idea of using an AED device is a natural and not to be feared. There exists a huge untapped resource of potential life savers today in our own schools. Train them to save lives today and continue to work toward providing them healthy nutrition in the longer run.

Individuals are the Numerator with SCA Saves

Anne Kelly’s piece, Odds of Surviving Cardiac Arrest Unchanged (KFYR-TV 12/9/09), accentuates disturbing and, perhaps, counter-productive figures related to out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Kelly cites national Sudden Cardiac Arrest survival rates and stubborn statistical data that industry insiders see time and time again – Out-of-hospital survival rates are less than 5%, according to the American Heart Association (AHA). Correctly, Kelly correlates this “stagnant” data to poor and/or inadequate training, even in the face in increased awareness and deployment of life-saving Automated External Defibrillators (AED Units).

Kelly fails to mention, however, that “minor” adjustments to a numerator in any equation wherein the denominator is large, will provide a similar quotient to that which was previously calculated. That is, since SCA kills approximately 350,000 people each year (a HUGE denominator) and only 5% are saved (17,500; a SMALL numerator, relative to the denominator) to see a one-percent adjustment in survival rates, 3,500 new lives must be saved! When stepping away from the long-division and humanizing the math, 3,500 people becomes a meaningful number of lives. For reference, UNICEF reports that child abuse leads to 3,500 child deaths each year.

For arguments sake, let us assume that we’re rounding to the hundreds place – after all, these are just numbers, right? Saving an additional 1,749 lives would result in just under a 0.5% increase to national survival rates, yielding a new quotient of …. 5%!!! (17,500 + 1,749 = 19,249 / 350,000 = 5%) Therefore, when we look at a societal problem such as SCA, far-and-away America’s greatest killer and one that is preventable in most cases (studies indicate with early defibrillation survival rates can exceed 70%), we mustn’t be concerned with national averages unless we’re also prepared to weigh the humanistic reality of the numbers – the numerator. Regularly speaking with SCA Survivors gives me strong reason to believe that they’d like to be counted as more than 0.00028% or a part of the Numerator in a division problem. So I ask, are the daily SCA saves meaningful and are AED units and wide-spread CPR training making a difference or are they irrelevant, leaving the national averages “unchanged?”

Changing Demographics in the Workplace and its Effect on Corporate Health & Wellness Programs

An unanticipated side effect of the current economic climate is the changing demographic in the workplace. Long time employees are staying on the job and retiring later than did their predecessors, uncertainty about the future coupled with the fact that Social Security benefits that are not fully payable until age 66. More than one retiree has stayed in the workplace several years past a planned retirement date to hedge against shaky company pension funds.

But what of the younger worker, commonly referred to as Gen X? Clearly, as fewer workers are choosing retirement, correspondingly fewer younger workers are being hired. This change has greatly affected the demographics of the work place leading to a general graying of employees. The factors are far reaching, not the least of which is an impact upon corporate health and wellness care benefits. A shift from an emphasis upon health care for middle aged workers–traditionally a low risk group to insure– to the needs of workers previously considered “retirement age” has affected the amount of coverage employers are able to offer as well as the premium price tag employees and employers alike must pay due to higher risk factors associated with aging.

In spite of the fact that today’s “baby boomer” is more likely to eat healthily, exercise regularly, and less likely to smoke, there are health factors associated with aging such as high blood pressure and increased cardiac issues. Add to these the stress factor associated with the uncertain economy and the potential for strain upon the health care system is undeniable. Consider the strain upon the already thin company profit margin and the stress cycle begins anew.

It is time that employers recognize that the corporate health and wellness programs they provide must address the needs of the older worker. The risk for sudden cardiac arrest during exercise is twenty times as high as when at rest. Employers would be well advised to put into practice preventive programs as well as to equip all their workers with the skills necessary to address sudden cardiac arrest such as CPR training and Automated External Defibrillator (AED) Unit deployment. The odds are that the longer a person lives and works, the greater the chance a cardiac event will be witnessed. The burden does not rest solely upon the employer, however. It is incumbent upon the older worker to make appropriate life style changes if needed as well as to become informed about interventions that may be necessary. This dual responsibility awareness forges the best possible work partnership, a situation where each is working with the other for mutual benefit.

How to choose a first aid training provider

Most American businesses and organizations provide some level of first aid or safety training for their staff and employees. It is imperative that management select a firm to provide consultation, training, and follow up support that is the best fit for their needs. However, choosing a first aid training provider is not an easy task especially when you consider the lack of consistency in the health and safety training industry. Additionally, if you have a large organization there are geographical challenges such as having multiple locations diversely peppered across the country. Countless hours are lost locating qualified vendors, negotiating the investment and terms of the agreement, and selecting the appropriate vendor based on a firm’s corporate first aid training goals. To make matters worse, these efforts are further exacerbated when large offices require their human resources departments to properly vet each vendor for each office.

Here are 3 essential factors to consider when deciding who to hire to provide your next first aid training session.

1. Know what your first aid training session will include and what, if any, customized programs must be addressed. The vendor must be able to scale based on your organization’s demands, give recommendations regarding industry best practices, and provide much more than basic first aid training. Consider, as you grow, will the vendor be able to help with evacuation training, CPR training, or other customized health and safety programs? If not, they might not be the right vendor for you.
2. Require instruction from medical professionals with years of field experience. The people teaching your office life-saving skills must have extensive experience responding to emergencies. Only professionals who respond daily, who have performed the skills they are teaching, and who have a passion for their craft, will be able to address the critical emotional aspects involved during emergencies. Lay rescuers don’t turn into inactive bystanders because they can’t remember what to do. They freeze, allowing people to die, because they’re scared.
3. The firm selected must be able to provide customized training at all of your facilities – nationally. One vendor, one negotiation, one contract, and one point of contact will save time, money, and allow your organization to contract and expand seamlessly as your organization’s needs change. Rather than asking satellite offices to adhere to corporate policies, then setting them free to find their own vendors and to learn a new field, the corporate office should set the standard and ensure the solution has been appropriately implemented.

If you’re not sure who’ll be showing up to teach your next First Aid training session, its likely that you also aren’t benefiting from economies of scale, financial savings, and the experiences of medical professionals who know the specific needs of your organization. By sticking to these three criteria, you’ll be the hero of the office. Not only because you’ll learn to implement the skills you’ve been taught, but because you’ve saved your firm time and money.

Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) vs Fire Extinguishers

Consider this -

- There are millions of fire extinguishers deployed in buildings throughout the United States, while Automated External Defibrillators (AED units) offer less than 1% market saturation.

- Structures built from all types of materials are required to have fire extinguishers on site, while few buildings require defibrillators.

- A fire extinguisher might result in limited property damage, but its effect on saving a life is uncertain. Conversely, AED units will prevent death for the majority of Sudden Cardiac Arrest victims if applied in a timely manner.

- While fires spread quickly and do risk life, if SCA isn’t treated within 3-5 minutes, the victim’s chances of survival are less than 5%

- Today’s technology gives warning during the early, incipient stages of a fire, while Sudden Cardiac Arrest is instant and by definition shows no signs or symptoms before attacking its victims.

- Fires are a result of three things: oxygen, heat, and fuel. You take out one element and the fire will go out. Sudden Cardiac Arrest can attack any individual no matter their age, ethnicity, or background.

And yet -

According to the National Fire Protection Association’s (NFPA) 2007 report, “Fire Loss in the United States During 2007″ there were 3,430 civilian and 102 firefighter deaths during the year. By comparison, Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA) was estimated to take the lives of over 350,000 Americans during the year, far and away the country’s leading killer.

Certainly fires are tragic and all avoidable deaths, from fires or otherwise, have a detrimental impact on communities, families, and involved parties. However with so much attention paid to fires and fire-related deaths and so little to Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA) deaths, one must wonder about the inadequacies in coverage and attention between the two preventable occurrences.

Access to the life saving equipment to be able to respond to incidents is critically important for any type of emergency!

Workplace safety training in today’s economy

Imagine a co-worker collapses, an ambulance pulls up to your organization, and paramedics begin taking life-saving measures next to computers, telephones, and cubical walls. What had been until now a normal day, suddenly transforms into anything but normal. It is natural for anyone who witnesses this incident to experience a range of emotions - shock, distress, anxiety, concern. With Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA) killing 1000 people every day in the US – more than breast cancer, HIV/AIDS, gun shot wounds, and car accidents COMBINED – it is certain that many of these deaths occur daily in the workplace.

With cost overruns, delayed sales close dates, reduced sales packages, and general market instability, business managers are forced, like never before, to plan for the unexpected. Significant injury and illness in the workplace affects all aspects of an organization and strikes even the large firms which are typically perceived to be resilient to one-person injuries due to their size. There is also the belief that such organizations are compartmentalized with employees forming personal relationships only with those in their department and sitting adjacent to them, which is a misconception.

The outcome of the incident described before, is directly correlated to the time and severity of the recovery process for everyone involved with it. A state of shock is long-lasting and powerful. Most organizations understand that while it is important to address an incident by being sensitive to their employees and allowing them adequate time during the grieving process, it is also important to transition the firm to normal business operations as quickly as possible – especially when precious resources are scarce and employees are nervous about their employment, as during poor economic conditions.

We all wish to be the anomaly of Sudden Cardiac Arrest’s reach and avoid it entirely however it is virtually impossible to do so given its effect on victims of all ages, races, and sexes. SCA strikes everyone and everywhere. Defibrillation within 3-5 minutes can result in greater than a 70% chance of survival, however, across the country today’s average save rates are less than 5%. Studies indicate the important role the public plays in mitigating the severity of cardiac arrest by providing early and proper CPR and early defibrillation.

Employees of organizations across the country are looking at the statistics and beginning to ask their employers ‘why aren’t we installing AED units and increasing the chance of survival at our office from 5% to over 70%?’ The business case for deployment becomes much more compelling when decision-makers analyze costs associated with decreased productivity, absent employees, presenteeism (when employees are in the office but unfocussed), and similar costs which commonly aren’t analyzed.

In a tough economy, organizations are forced to look at their bottom lines like never before. One way to save financial resources is to analyze the investment of only a few thousand dollars for effective, safe, and efficient AED programs versus the potential financial impact of lost productivity, higher absenteeism, and decreased morale after a death at the workplace. Such economic analysis doesn’t include the most important comparative measure of all, the “cost” associated with lost life. Automated External Defibrillator (AED) units are simply the right thing for employer’s to provide, in good times and bad.