Press release from Parkview Health:
Parkview Health launches Community Paramedicine pilot program in Allen County
(February 3, 2016) – Parkview leaders announced today a new community health initiative to begin in spring 2016. The Parkview Health Community Paramedicine pilot program will be introduced in Allen County. Through a two-year grant from the State Department of Health, Parkview Health will be the first to implement this evolving model of healthcare in northeast Indiana.
Community Paramedicine (CP) is a model of community-based care in which paramedics function outside their customary emergency response and transport roles to provide follow-up and preventative care to patients in their homes/nursing care facilities. CP paramedics proactively focus their efforts in assisting individuals and families in attaining and maintaining optimal health outside a hospital setting.
Parkview Health Community Paramedicine will pilot the program with six local nursing home facilities, social services and other health care providers to provide in-home outreach services within 24 hours of hospital discharge. Six paramedics will receive specialized training and will work under physician direction using patient care protocols to visit patients outside the hospital setting. The program is designed to reduce unnecessary hospital utilization and improve the patient’s overall health and ability to care for themselves. In-home visits may include hospital discharge follow-up care, prescription assistance, risk assessment and safety evaluation, wound dressing and treatment, general health evaluation, monitoring of vitals, and immunizations.
Increasing intervention outside the hospital, Parkview Health Community Paramedicine will
- reduce the gap that can occur after hospital discharges
- curb unnecessary nursing home patient admissions
- increase safety and decrease falls
- decrease frequent emergency department and hospital utilization
“This program will deliver healthcare to the community in an entirely new way,” says Dan Garman, senior vice president, Emergency Services, Parkview Health. “Community Paramedicine proactively manages patient’s post-hospital and chronic care outside the emergency department. The expanded paramedic service not only benefits the hospital through reduced ER visits and hospital readmissions, it increases a patient’s access to primary and preventative care and provides them with the encouragement and tools to improve outcomes after treatment.”
In the past decade, according to the Joint National EMS Leadership Forum, close to 300 fire departments, ambulance services and hospital systems nationwide have launched similar CP programs. Programming in other states has shown increasing intervention outside the hospital improves the coordination and continuity of care and helps prevent non urgent ER visits and hospital readmissions.
Currently in Allen County, reliance on ER’s continues to soar as many patients turn to them for non-urgent care or care that could have been avoided through timely use of primary care. Parkview’s own research showed 47 patients made 521 ER visits from January through May of 2015. By lowering the number of unnecessary ER visits through the CP program, Parkview hopes to improve the health of the community and lower overall healthcare costs.
“Parkview is committed to providing the right patient care, delivered at the right time and in the right setting, resulting in the best outcomes and most efficient use of healthcare resources,” continued Garman. “Although cost-savings and decreasing unnecessary ER utilization will benefit the overall healthcare system, the true value of this program is proactively connecting individuals with timely, safe and appropriate healthcare.”
The project is funded with state and federal sources. The Federal Public Health and Health Services Block Grant composed of Prevention and Public Health funds represents 72% ($232,378) of the total project funding. (award number B01T00919,CFDA number 93.758).
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