A couple of new strategies are being used by the local paramedic service to improve patient to hospital programs.
Chief of emergency Services Doug Socha spoke about the service at a meeting of the Emergency Services Committee on
Wednesday.
Socha noted, “A new program got underway last month which now has low priority patients taken to the waiting room so we don’t need to bypass local hospitals and take patients outside the local area. With the introduction of the bypass agreement, while giving one hospital some temporary relief increases the workload to another. To decrease these pressures a new Fit2Sit program was implemented that will have the patient transferred to the local emergency department if they can be taken to the waiting room and not require a stretcher.
“The Fit-to-Sit program where patients with low acuity will be taken after triage at the hospital into the waiting room. So that way they can get ambulances and paramedics back out into the community.”
Socha said, “I would like to highlight specifically the community paramedic program and the success and how we’re seeing that help the entire health care system.”
He added, “We have been doing trials to have a paramedic or community paramedic working in the emergency room to help with both ambulance and hospital patients.”
“There have been 4,805 client interactions, over 3,500 in-home client interactions.”
“You’ll also see there were 44 first response calls so even with community paramedics out doing regular home visits if there’s an emergency and they’re the closest paramedic they will also respond.”
He added, “We have been doing trials to have a paramedic or community paramedic working in the emergency room to help with both ambulance and hospital patients.”
Socha indicated the pressure on the health care system could be eased by the government rewriting some legislation and putting in place new procedures for treating and releasing patients or treating and referring them to other care providers.
There were about 306 phone calls in the past year where community paramedics were alerted by remote patient monitoring equipment.”
