Using Data to Protect Firefighters and Drive Improvement

“A culture of excellence for us is ensuring that our data is as high-quality as it can be and using it in our reporting metrics.” 

– Matt Jacoby, Assistant Fire Chief at Cary Fire Department, North Carolina

Cary Fire Department in Cary, North Carolina, knows that good data can mean the difference between guessing and making informed decisions that keep firefighters safe. Over the years, the department has built a culture focused on collecting high-quality, consistent data and turning it into action.

In this video, Matt Jacoby, Assistant Fire Chief at Cary Fire Department, shares how data has become part of their daily operations and how that mindset helps drive continuous improvement across the department. Between setting higher benchmarks to pioneering new processes, Cary Fire is using data to protect firefighters, improve patient care, and shape the future of fire service operations.

Video Transcript

How Cary Fire Department Uses Quality Data

to Make Informed Decisions 

Matt Jacoby

Assistant Fire Chief at Town of Cary Fire Department

Cary, North Carolina

We collect an awful lot of data through reports and other metrics that we all are required to complete, and there’s a real opportunity to use that data in a way that drives our profession forward.

The culture of excellence for us is really ensuring that our data is as high-quality as it can be and then using that in our reporting metrics. This culture has been ingrained in us for much of my career, and year by year, we incrementally try to raise the bar, set that standard, and continue that journey of continuous improvement.

Now, the fire service is traditionally resistant to change, so it does impede progress sometimes. I just want to challenge folks, the fire service leaders who are there, to rethink what they do and think outside of where they currently are in different ways [and how] they can use that data to stretch.

If you can’t compare your data to itself with a benchmark, then it becomes useless. So you have to have that established standard and then continue to raise that bar so you can challenge yourself.

That’s what it’s all about for us. That’s the culture of continuous improvement and excellence.

We’ve been tracking fire decontamination, products of combustion, and exposures for about a year. I think we’ve just implemented that as a mandatory field now. So that’s going live just this week. Very excited to see the outcome of that and the impact on our folks because that’s a huge focus, as you know, making sure our people stay safe and get them into retirement for a long life.

Becoming the first fire department in our county to implement the HDE and electronic patient transfer is groundbreaking for us.

We embarked on a long journey, really working with our county partners to get to a point where everybody was comfortable turning this function on. Since that time, we’ve been live with that for about two years or so. We really paved the way for other departments to come on board and simplify their process.

We like things very simple, and with the iOS app coming online, that simplifies and streamlines things even more. The ability to dictate what a medication that you’re administering is, automatically ingesting that, and putting it in the proper spot – that is remarkable.

The advice I would give anyone who’s looking to start this would be to embrace it fully – but don’t force it upon anyone. When we build our teams, many of them are voluntary. We solicit input, and whoever wants to contribute can contribute.

That’s the heart of a successful team. They want to be there. They want to be a part of that change.

We like to lead the way. Cary Fire Department enjoys being first in anything that we can.

I get to be a small part of that, and that’s the true joy for me.

To learn more about the incredible work Cary Fire Department is doing, visit carync.gov/services-publications/fire. 

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