Community Paramedicine Medical Direction

Dr. Jonathan Schmitz, Medical Director of Community Paramedicine

Hendricks Regional Health (HRH) will operate a Community Paramedicine Partnership in order to improve the health of residents in the county by:

• Helping to connect community patients to available health resources in order to manage their health conditions more effectively.

• Effectively using HRH medical personnel to help close the gap between community patient needs and community health resources.

• Making home visits to patients identified as needing assistance and assessing their health status and unmet healthcare needs.

• Encouraging, empowering, and engaging patients to embrace self-care.

• Understanding and applying the principles of health promotion, positive health behavior change, motivational interviewing, wellness, and prevention approaches to minimize relapses, 911 calls, emergency department (ED) visits, hospitalizations, and to improve the patient's overall health.

• Helping the patient to proactively seek primary care services for disease management.

• Teaching patients about their health conditions, medications, treatments, and good approaches to health maintenance.

• Partnering with community health providers (primary care, home health, health educators, health plans) and support services to facilitate resource coordination for high-risk community members.

Community Paramedicine Partnership (CPP) with Hendricks Regional Health:

1. In view of the complexity of the health care system, community residents with continuing health problems will benefit from learning more about those problems. This increased knowledge, along with positive encouragement and support will lead to increased self-efficacy. As a result, CPP patients will be less dependent on healthcare professionals and motivated to take charge of their own health challenges.

2. When CPP patients learn about available community health resources, they will become more able to deal positively with health issues.

3. CPP patients will benefit from help in coordinating their medical care among various providers.

4. CPP patients will be less likely to call 911 for a deteriorating medical condition that is not a true emergency, and less likely, therefore, to be readmitted to a hospital for a chronic medical problem.

5. CPP Patients will be more likely to participate in preventive and wellness behaviors.

6. Persons who embrace prevention and wellness behaviors, and who gain knowledge and skills in positively dealing with their own medical conditions, will be able to manage their health more effectively and with less expense.

7. HRH has personnel with the medical knowledge and skills to assist residents in positively dealing with their health challenges and medical conditions.

8. HRH personnel, being strategically based within the community, are uniquely positioned to be able to help with the coordination of medical care for individual residents among various health care providers and are especially knowledgeable about the health resources available in the community.

9. With years of experience in providing emergency medical care to the community, often among the most challenging circumstances, HRH personnel are particularly able and available to provide non-emergency medical support for CPP Patients.

10. The challenges of a more rural environment, with its lack of extensive medical resources, can lead to some residents being medically under served. HRH offers CPP services to all county residents to help deal with these challenges.