In 2004, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) collaborated with Emory University School of Medicine's Department of Emergency Medicine to develop Cardiac Arrest Registry to Enhance Survival (CARES), an OHCA surveillance registry to help communities increase survival rates. At present, CARES includes 28 state-based registries and the District of Columbia, with 50 additional community sites in 16 additional states. CARES represents a catchment area of more than 162 million people or approximately 48% of the US population. To date, the registry has captured over 600,000 records, with more than 2,000 EMS agencies and over 2,500 hospitals participating nationwide. 

In 2011, when CARES began expanding to statewide participation which allows enrollment of additional communities of different sizes and population densities to be included in the registry. MN was one of the first 5 states to come onboard through the HeartRescue Project. Since then, we have proudly partnered with all levels of stakeholders in our state to improve cardiac arrest care and data collection. We cover 85-90% of the state by population in CARES and are working to get that number up to 100%. 

CARES is a secure, web-based data management system in which participating communities care enter local data and generate their own reports. Communities can compare their EMS system performance to de-identified aggregate statistics at the local, state, or national level and discover promising practices that could improve emergency cardiac care.