News Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Mitzi Vince
Phone: (304) 346-9864, ext. 3253
E-mail: mvince@qualityinsights.org
CHARLESTON, WV (September 20, 2018) – Quality Insights has partnered with the Kanawha County Emergency Ambulance Authority (KCEAA), the Partners in Health Network and Jan Care to produce two educational videos on the impact of community paramedicine in West Virginia.
Community paramedicine (CP) is a form of expanded care – often referred to as mobile integrated health care services – that is delivered by nationally-registered paramedics who have received additional training. CP has been shown to help lessen unnecessary hospital admissions and emergency department visits while enhancing access to quality care for the state’s most vulnerable and rural residents.
“We teamed up with community paramedicine experts in our area to produce these videos as a way to help both patients and healthcare providers understand the positive impact of CP on people with Medicare who live in West Virginia,” Biddy Smith, Network Task Lead for Special Projects at Quality Insights, said.
The videos, which are available on Quality Insights Quality Innovation Network’s YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/qualityinsightsqin), include a patient-focused video titled “Community Paramedicine: Quality Health Care at Your Door” that explains the benefits of CP from the patient perspective. A provider- focused video, titled “Community Paramedicine: Enhancing Access to Quality Health Care,” examines the impact of CP on the healthcare industry.
“Community paramedicine is filling a gap of needs within our communities,” Monica Mason, Director of Community Paramedicine at KCEAA, said. “Once patients are discharged from the hospital, our paramedics go out into the home and visit them to ensure that the plan of care from the hospital is continued to the home until they get back to their doctor’s office for follow-up and further recommendations.”
Like Mason, fellow advocate Jerry Long believes community paramedicine can have a positive effect on decreasing overall healthcare costs by treating patients before they need to call 9-1-1.
“I always felt like there was something more we could be doing,” Jerry Long, Director of Mobile Integrated Healthcare/Community Paramedicine at Jan Care, said. “We’re the second most rural state in the country. Our biggest healthcare crisis, in my opinion, is access. There are a lot of people still using emergency rooms as their primary care physician and that’s just a flawed system.”
A community paramedic can address both medical and social needs. Community paramedics can provide home safety assessments, triage and referral services, chronic disease management education, support for family caregivers, medication compliance support, vaccinations and more.
“It’s our hope that these videos can communicate the benefit of CP, not just for the patient, but also for the healthcare industry as a whole,” Smith said. “We want patients to understand how it can help improve their quality of life and we want providers to understand how CP is filling critical gaps in an effective and efficient way.”
For more information about this project, contact Biddy Smith at bsmith@qualityinsights.org, or call (304) 346- 9864 ext. 3252.
About Quality Insights Quality Innovation Network
Quality Insights is the Quality Innovation Network-Quality Improvement Organization (QIN-QIO) for Delaware, Louisiana, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Quality Insights collaborates with healthcare providers, patients and allied organizations across the network to bring about widespread, significant improvements in the quality of care they deliver. We are committed to reaching the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' goals of better care, smarter spending and healthier people. To learn more about the network, visit www.qualityinsights-qin.org.
