4 ways paramedics are changing healthcare delivery

The emergency medical services industry is undergoing massive change to better meet the needs of patients. In some communities, this means paramedics offer house calls and preventive care to keep patients out of the hospital. In others, it means experimenting to see if trauma patients actually do better with less intervention from paramedics.

Here is a look at the four ways the industry has adapted to the changing healthcare environment--and how it may evolve in the years ahead, according to The Wall Street Journal.

State-of-the-art equipment on ground and air.  Paramedics are now better able to treat the worst types of emergencies because they travel with sophisticated x-ray, lab and ultrasound equipment, and can communicate test results directly to emergency rooms. Among the leaders in this area is the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, which has an air ambulance and collaborates with the U.S military to learn how to best treat wounds most often seen on the battlegrounds, according to the publication.

Preventive care teams. Many communities now rely on paramedics to treat patients at home, help manage their chronic conditions, or follow-up on recently discharged hospital patients. This new model of care can help meet unmet patient needs and “make emergency response more reliable,” Kevin Munjal, M.D., director of prehospital care at the Mount Sinai Health System in New York, told the WSJ.

Mount Sinai is taking part in a pilot program that has community paramedics treat patients in their homes and consults with doctors at the hospital via telemedicine. Thirty-six patients take part in the program and only five who called the service during a six-month period needed transport to receive care at the hospital. Munjal estimated the savings to be $1,400 per encounter, according to the article.

National information-sharing networks. New systems are underway that may make it easier for paramedics to share information in an emergency, according to the WSJ. The First Responder Network Authority is working to create a high-speed nationwide, wireless broadband network for patient safety. Once developed, paramedics could transmit live video and images from the scenes of accidents.

Plans to provide less intervention. As far as the industry has come, some researchers believe patients may benefit from less care by paramedics, according to the publication. Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia is taking part in a five-year study to compare groups of patients who are shot or stabbed and who receive advanced life support to the outcomes of patients who are taken immediately to the hospital with only basic life-support therapy. “Sometimes we think of innovation as adding more treatment, but innovation here means doing less,” Amy Goldberg, chair of Temple’s department of surgery, told the publication.