Community paramedic home visit pilot program begins at Regions Hospital

Partnership with the Saint Paul Fire Department will help reduce unnecessary hospital readmissions

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Feb. 24, 2015 — A pilot program that helps reduce emergency calls and unnecessary hospital readmissions is now expanding to the east metro. Regions Hospital and the Saint Paul Fire Department are partnering on an effort that will provide home visits from a specially trained paramedic for patients who have recently left the hospital.

The east side expansion will focus on patients with congestive heart failure, which has one of the highest readmission rates. Since readmissions generally occur within the first 72 hours after a patient has been discharged, the community paramedics will visit patient’s homes within 48 hours after they have left the hospital.

The community paramedics will:

• Provide education on medications and assist patients in reconciling multiple prescriptions
• Perform a clinical assessment and notify the patients physician when additional care is needed
• Help patients understand what symptoms to be aware of and who to call if they experience them
• Ensure patients are connected to community resources for necessities such as food and transportation
• Perform a home safety check to ensure their environment does not have any safety hazards

As part of the discharge process, physicians will refer patients with congestive heart failure to the Saint Paul Fire Department for the Community Paramedic home visit. There is no cost to patients or to health plans for the visit.

“So much of what keeps people healthy happens outside of the doctor’s office. Innovative programs and partnerships, such as this, help us as a community find new ways to improve health,” said R.J. Franscone, MD, medical director of Regions Hospital Emergency Medical Services. “Our colleagues at Methodist Hospital have seen great results with this program, and we are excited to expand it to the east metro.”

A pilot program at Methodist began in May 2014 using emergency medical technicians from local fire departments to perform home safety and wellness checks on patients discharged from the hospital. Since May fire department crews have visited nearly 200 patients. Of these, the firefighter/EMT’s identified 20 cases where additional care was needed from the patient’s medical team. They also connected 10 patients to social/community services, seven patients to food shelves and replaced 52 smoke detectors or batteries.