Welcome to EMSTARS

Using data to influence the delivery of exceptional service to the community

Florida continues its commitment to providing quality Emergency Medical Services (EMS) for its citizens and visitors, services that are founded on the principles of quality improvement, ensuring that an optimal, uniform and standard of prehospital emergency medical care is available to everyone in Florida.

To make this commitment a reality, the Florida Prehospital EMS Tracking and Reporting System or (EMSTARS) was created. This program provides for the collection of incident level data from EMS agencies and subsequent analysis for benchmarking and identifying quality improvement initiatives.

This program has been implemented with the guidance of the EMS Advisory Council Data Committee who defines and maintains Data Dictionaries consistent with the NEMSIS v3., ensuring the standardized collection of EMS incident data into the state repository.  The NEMSIS v3 standard is inclusive of NEMSIS v3.4 and NEMSIS v3.5.  Please note: The NEMSIS v3.3.4 standard is no longer accepted as of August 2021. 

The Health Information and Policy Analysis Section (HIPAS) operates the EMSTARS program.  Currently, the EMSTARS program and its data repository is administered through the use of the biospatial program.  Therefore, these two programs are referred to as EMSTARS/biospatial. Additional information about Florida's Prehospital EMS Tracking and Reporting System is available in this EMSTARS Basic Facts  document.

Spotlight - Florida Data Submissions

Florida licensed EMS providers submit data near real time to the EMSTARS/biospatial in compliance with the national data standards for NEMSIS v3.x.  The following graph presents submission volumes for the previous month.

A report from biospatial for the number of records submitted to EMSTARS for the previous month by week.  Login into EMSTARS/biospatial for this and other reports on your agency’s data.

Partial list of biospatial dashboards:

• Data Management
• EMS Performance

To ensure vendor compliance to the data collection standards,

The Health Information and Policy Analysis Section (HIPAS/Data Unit) in the Bureau of Emergency Medical Oversight (BEMO) will validate ePCR software vendors in the state of Florida.  HIPAS will validate NEMSIS compliant and Non-NEMSIS compliant software.  This validation process will ensure that Florida elements, custom elements and Florida business rules have been implemented. The Vendor Validation Process can be viewed on the Florida EMSTARS website.   http://www.floridaemstars.com/vendors.htm

For further information and assistance, please contact the EMSTARS Team.

Florida has a very broad public records law. Most written communications to or from state officials regarding state business are public records available to the public and media upon request. Your email communications may therefore be subject to disclosure

If you have a story to tell, or something or someone to Spotlight, please contact the EMSTARS Team.

This page was reviewed and updated on June 20, 2023