Since implementing the Community Paramedic Program in 2014, Fort Bend County has seen a decrease in ambulance transports among patients who make repeat calls for EMS services.
The program identifies callers who are uninsured or using Medicaid and who make frequent or inappropriate use of Emergency Medical Services and hospital emergency services.
“We had a number of folks that were using EMS ambulance services sometimes as often as 44-plus times per year,” said Dr. Mary desVignes-Kendrick, director and health authority of the Fort Bend County Department of Health and Human Services.
AccessHealth is the county’s go-to medical home for low-income residents and is a part of the county’s efforts to reduce ambulance calls. It is funded in part by the Healthcare Transformation and Quality Improvement Program 1115 waiver, a federal funding program created in 2011.
The county pays for 42 percent of the program assuming it achieves milestones. The waiver expired Sept. 30, 2016, but desVignes-Kendrick said the Texas Health and Human Services Commission is negotiating to extend it for five years.
The county has provided additional funding to AccessHealth to offset the cost of more patients from the paramedic program, thus allowing AccessHealth to be open on Saturdays from 8 a.m. to noon, she said.
“The weekend appointments in particular allow people who work during the week to [have] better access on Saturdays and to have a provider that they’re routinely seeing,” she said.
In 2013, 220 patients were identified who frequently called for an ambulance, desVignes-Kendrick said. The following year, once those patients were enrolled in the health initiative, there were 131 patients identified who frequently called, a 40 percent decrease.
“Those individuals we also work to get into a medical home so that their congestive heart failure, diabetes, hypertension, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, etc., could be more actively taken care of in a medical home,” desVignes-Kendrick said.
