Closing the Care Gap

As readers of EMS World Magazine know, one of the hottest topics we covered in 2013 was the evolving world of community paramedicine and mobile healthcare and what it means for EMS systems.

A new white paper released by Modern Healthcare proposes that the most common existing mobile healthcare system—EMS—is well suited to host mobile integrated healthcare practice (MIHP) and coordinate service delivery by multiple providers.

“Mobile Integrated Healthcare Practice: A Healthcare Delivery Strategy to Improve Access, Outcomes and Value” reviews the discontinuities of health service that exist in the care of patients at home and how MIHP could close those current care gaps.

“EMS systems are easily scalable to absorb the additional loads arising from such a new mobile health strategy with minimal marginal cost,” write the authors. “When linked with request-for-service information from dispatch system, geographic information system and population health data, the existing EMS infrastructure provides a powerful tool for launching and supporting MIHP.”

According to Eric Beck, DO, NREMT-P, one of the document’s authors, the paper offers a strategic framework demonstrating how EMS systems can partner with other healthcare resources to serve a range of patients in the out-of-hospital setting. These interprofessional healthcare teams would deliver care based on local gap analysis and population needs assessment.

To read the white paper, visit www.modernhealthcare.com/perspectives_MIHP.

EMS World is hosting a series of mobile integrated healthcare updates at the following events:

• February 19, 2014, Fire Service Update, Firehouse World, San Diego, CA
• March 7, 2014, Technology Update, Redline Executive Summit, Orlando, FL
• March 25, 2014, Payer Update, EMS on the Hill, Washington DC.