Raising patient satisfaction involves meeting the patient’s physical needs as well as their mental and emotional needs. As it happens, a patient’s psychological and physical health are intertwined – a health system cannot provide the best physical care while ignoring the aspects of a patient’s livelihood. In this article, we’ll discuss delivering effective home care with community paramedicine.
We’ll discuss the multiple benefits of treating patients in their homes and how providing in-depth home treatment can have a long-term impact. Not only that, but we’ll look at both sides of the story: how the home-treatment model can benefit the patient and how it can benefit health providers.
Lastly, we’ll chat about some of the iterations of home care, some results, and how community paramedicine teams can mainstream home-based care.
How Do Community Paramedics Deliver Care to Patients Homes?
Let’s start by looking at how community paramedics deliver home care. Community paramedicine can come in many different forms, and some areas will benefit from one type of care more than another.
Here are three ways to deliver effective home care with community paramedicine:
- They perform regular check-ups to augment primary care: Community paramedics can help augment primary care for patients who struggle with transportation. These programs can also reach those who live in rural environments or when an area is overwhelmed and needs to extend its primary care reach. Community paramedics provide regular in-home visits, facilitate assessments with physicians, and review the status of care plans.
- Provide follow-up visits for illness, substance abuse, and mental health care: Another form of in-home care relates to providing check-ups and care for patients struggling with a specific complicated disease. For example, community paramedics might enter the home to provide care to diabetic patients, or they might oversee care for patients after they have experienced an overdose. Finally, many community paramedic programs offer home care for people struggling with mental health illness.
- Provide long-term care similar to a hospital (hospital at home): In a sort of cumulative effort, there has now been an emergence of hospital-at-home programs. These programs are what they sound like – an effort to emulate the hospital’s care but deliver it to patients within their homes.This is often quite an involved process, beginning with a home assessment and continuing with careful physician oversight and advanced training for community paramedics.
As you can see, there are many ways that community paramedics can provide care in the home. However, some might think it seems like more work than it’s worth. This is a fair point – no one wants to start a new program if there won’t be results. With that in mind, let’s talk about several rock-solid reasons why delivering care in the home benefits the patient and the provider.
The Benefits of Delivering Care to Patients in Their Homes: For the Patient and the Provider
Many community health organizations and ambulance agencies don’t want to extend their resources to programs that aren’t going to pay off. What does payoff mean? Well, for one, organizations want to ensure that home care benefits the patient. For two, the program should provide some benefits for the organization. And finally, these programs should act as a puzzle piece in the area’s overarching health goals.
Here are several benefits of using community paramedicine to deliver care to patients in their homes:
- Improving patient satisfaction and reducing system overload
- Preventing the spread of disease and reducing negative interactions
- More efficiently using the healthcare resources available.
I’ll provide a little more information below.
Improve Patient Satisfaction with Home Care (And Reduce System Overload)
The first benefit of home care is the improvement in the life of the patient. There have been numerous studies that point to the efficacy of delivering care within the patient’s home. Patients often report fewer complications and better adherence to treatment regimens when care is offered in the home.
Also, when patients receive satisfying and effective care, they are less likely to fall into negative patterns, such as overusing the 911 system or visiting the ER for even minor ailments. In this way, when patients are appropriately cared for, health systems will see a reduction in costly misuse of the health system (super-utilizers, etc.) The goal is to go on the healthcare offense. Let’s talk more about this below.
Prevent the Spread of Disease and Reduce Negative Interactions: The Power of MIH Home Care
The current health climate is often very reactive. Instead of planning for and working to prevent costly illness, many areas are caught flat-footed when troubles arise. One directly positive benefit of home care is the inhibition of disease. Many times, the hospital environment is a top location for the spread of disease. The same could be said of assisted-living facilities and any other facility that sees long-term patient stays.
When patients are treated within their homes, their interaction with other sick and vulnerable patients is limited. Providers can take appropriate precautions themselves, helping to stop a disease in its tracks – this is essentially impossible with a reactive health system that waits for disease to come to them.
Finally, active home care for people struggling with mental health issues can also reduce negative interactions with the police, leading to better outcomes for the patient and PD.
Home Care with Community Paramedicine Helps Health Systems Better Deploy Their Resources
Suppose you consider healthcare as an army for good and diseases and illness as the enemy. In that case, it can help us ask: are we deploying our resources to maximize potential and give us an advantage?
In many areas, we see healthcare following an approach that’s been tried and proven true by the military: training task forces to address specific problems. In a sense, this is what happens with home care.
A group of the population is especially suited for care in their home. Suppose a specially trained team of community paramedics can deliver care to these patients. In that case, there’s an improvement in the overall health landscape, and we are that much closer to fighting disease. But how do you do it?
Let’s discuss how community paramedic teams can better integrate home care into their protocols.
How to Begin Providing Effective Home Care with Community Paramedicine
You might be curious about the execution of mobile integrated health-community paramedicine home care programs. Part of the journey for each area is finding what works for them, as every area will have different needs. The key is to stay persistent.
Here are three things you can do to start a good home care program:
- Find the area with the most need
- Get the community on board (and see what they think)
- Begin working towards better integration (this is key)
You can find more details below.
Home Care Program Fundamentals: Find the Area of Most Need
The first step in initiating a good home care program is finding the area of most need. Why is this important? First, it’s vital for the obvious reason: if there’s no real need (or there are other areas of the community that have greater need), it wouldn’t make much sense to dedicate resources to the project.
Second, finding an area of need will drastically improve your chances of getting partners on board. If you go to a town council and say, “I think a home care program would be a nice idea,” you might garner interest, and you might not. But if you say, “Diabetic patients make up 10 percent of our super-utilizers, and that’s costing the county money. A home health program would help,” you will be much more likely to build enthusiasm for the idea.
Starting Home Care Program: Get the Community on Board
As mentioned in the last section, you need to establish the need before going to the community for help. However, after you know a home care program would be a good idea (and the kind of home care program that could work), it’s time to reach out to potential partners to begin funding the project and work toward easy integration.
Stakeholder meetings are a great place to start, but you should also consider contacting organizations such as community centers, rehab facilities, and long-term care centers.
Let’s talk about integration.
Work Toward Better Integration (for the best home care results)
Finally, as you launch a home health program, you must maintain strong communication among your team and partners. If your home health programs draw blood, then there should be an established connection with the laboratory to ensure the treatment is carried out swiftly.
Also, if a physician is directly involved, a system should be set up to share documentation findings with the physical and facilitate field calls and video conferences.
Conclusion: Delivering Care into Patients’ Homes with Community Paramedicine
Delivering effective home care with community paramedicine can improve patient satisfaction and lead to less wasted time, money, and personal resources. Home care can come in many forms, from extended primary care check-ups to post-overdose response teams to hospital-at-home programs.
Here’s the key to implementing the program: Start with a strong foundation (a good needs assessment) and work your way up from there – reaching out to partners and ensuring effective integration.
Contact Julota to see how their leading MIH software will connect you with strong community partners and lead to better care in the field.