Has your community paramedicine program advanced past the “start-up” phase? Perhaps now you’re curious about how you can scale a community paramedic program. As you’ll see, developing strategies to scale your MIH-CP program leads to less risk, less wasted money, and more growth opportunities. This article answers the question: how can you grow your community paramedicine program in a healthy way?
Scaling your community paramedicine programs means taking what you have and optimizing it for better results. In business terms, “scale a company” means improving financial returns without making significant investments. However, for a community paramedic program, scaling your operations could equal growth, improved revenue, and seeing positive results in the community.
Does this seem confusing? It can be. In the following sections, we’ll walk through what scaling a community paramedic program means, how you can do it, and why it’s essential.
What Does it Mean to Scale Your Mobile Integrated Health-Community Paramedic Program (MIH-CP)?
Some might assume that scaling their mobile integrated health-community paramedic program (MIH-CP) means growing the organization. This is where things get a bit murky, so stay with me.
Growing your community paramedicine programs and scaling your community paramedicine program are two different things (though they are intertwined). I’ll begin by explaining growth, and then we’ll talk about what it means to scale.
Growing a business is typically referring to an ROI(Return on Investment. For example, let’s say you run an ice cream stand. You decide to grow the business and reach more people, so you set up another ice cream stand. Now, you have two ice cream stands, but you must hire more people to run the second one, pay for more rental space, and pay for upkeep.
In this example, you’ve grown your businesses (and there are advantages to that), but you’ve also incurred more expenses.
Now, let’s talk about scaling.
Scaling a business typically refers to a 2:1 or even 10:1* return on your investment (time, money, etc.). Let’s return to our ice cream stand for a moment. If you wanted to scale the ice cream stand, you might invest in an automated dispenser – this would reduce your workload while potentially reaching many more customers. In this instance, you would see a greater return on investment without actually “growing.” Does that make sense? Instead of becoming bigger, you become more efficient.
Now that we understand the difference between scaling your community paramedic program and growing your community paramedic program let’s talk about how to scale your program.
*Note: These numbers are just placeholders to highlight the point – they are not based on any concrete standards. Keep in mind that, for different businesses, scaling can take on slightly different meanings.
How to Scale Your Community Paramedicine Program
Now that we’re familiar with scaling and how it differs from growth, let’s discuss how you can successfully scale your community paramedic program. Use this section as a guideline to get you started; however, know that the real work of scaling your community paramedicine program comes down to digging into the nuances and coming up with solutions.
Ways to scale your community paramedicine program:
- Determine how you want to scale (set a goal)
- Consider operational changes (logistics)
- Optimize data management
- Improve internal and external communication (reduce errors)
Let me provide a little more context for each of these possibilities. If you’re curious, you can look at this expanded community paramedic toolkit used by Minnesota.
Determine How You Want to Scale Your MIH-CP Program
Are there specific goals in mind? What are your limitations? Determining how you want to scale is the first step in scaling your community paramedic program. This is where we need to distinguish between regular businesses and community paramedicine.
When running a for-profit business, scaling often means one thing: increasing monetary returns in some form or another. However, you might want to scale differently when operating a public health team such as a community paramedic program. For example, you might want to reach more patients with what you have, you might want to improve your connections in the community, or you might want to improve revenue.
Each goal will require a slightly different approach; however, you will also find that one area’s growth leads to another’s growth.
Consider Operational Changes to Community Paramedicine Fleet Logistics
Scaling a business is about strategy. What do I mean here? Strategy is the idea of using your assets to accomplish more. We’ve all witnessed incidences in business or sports where the “better team” lost because they had a poor strategy.
The first scaling strategy you can consider is how you’re deploying your fleet. For example, perhaps you operate your community paramedic unit several days a week. Are those the optimal days? Are there days of the week when that single unit could make more of an impact?
Also, do their routes to visit patients make sense for community paramedic units on a set schedule? Is there a way that appointments can be arranged to ensure maximum impact? Much of these things will depend on how your community paramedic program works; however, there are likely ways you can streamline operations, which will help in scaling the program.
Optimize Data Management for Community Paramedicine
Data is knowledge, and knowledge is power, so you should ensure you can collect and manage your data. Understanding your community paramedic program’s data will improve your ability to make calculated changes.
For example, if you’ve started an MIH-CP program to reduce frequent 911 calls, you should ensure you have clear data on whether the program is working. Managing your data is very much like managing a budget. If you don’t know what your program is doing, you’ll have difficulty strategizing ways to improve the system.
If you’re curious, check out Julota’s streamlined MIH-CP data management software – these tools ensure you’re getting the most out of your program.
Improve Community Paramedicine Communication: Internal and External
If data is the blood, then communication is the blood vessels. Data and communication work hand in hand. If you don’t collect good data, you won’t be able to communicate with your partners productively.
And improving communication is another way to scale your MIH-CP program. Too often, mistakes and miscommunications are accepted as “part of the job”; however, wasting time trying to track down a report or expending valuable resources because a community paramedic didn’t understand a physician’s instructions is not efficient and leads to wasted time, money, and a decrease in the quality of care.
Before you consider growing in any other way, you should ensure that your internal and external communication practices are as good as possible.
Why Scaling Your Community Paramedic Program is Important
Let’s look at some reasons why taking the time to scale your community paramedicine program can be a game changer. When scaling your community health programs, you’ll find that a bit of work can go a long way.
Here are three reasons:
- Leads to a healthier less risky program: Scaling your MIH-CP might also be called “stretching” or “exercising” the program. Why? Because you’re taking what you have and making it better. Also, you reduce the risk factor by shoring up the program and making it as good as possible. If you choose to sit back and say, “We’re good the way we are,” the MIH program could stagnate, making it hard to respond when trouble comes.
- Reduces pressure on management: Scaling your community paramedic program will also help reduce stress on those who manage the MIH program. Usually, hyper-management of a program indicates that there is a fundamental issue. When a community paramedicine program is scaled correctly, there is less need for micromanagement.
- Creates better opportunities for growth: If you’re looking to grow the community paramedic program, taking the time to scale what you have will ensure you have a foundation for future growth. If a small community paramedic is inefficient, then there’s no reason it won’t continue to be inadequate as it grows.
Hopefully, these points have provided some insight. Now, let’s take a moment to discuss our crucial takeaway.
Key Takeaway: Scaling Your Community Paramedicine Program is Crucial
The opposite of scaling is stagnation. If you’re not looking for ways to make your process more efficient, your community paramedicine program could become stuck in the mud of changing times, tightening budgets, and lacking trained personnel. Indeed, there are many struggles facing public health and community paramedicine, so you must remain vigilant to survive.
To grow your community paramedic program, start by establishing goals. Then, look at operations and logistics, consider your data collection practices, and the overall effectiveness of communication. If you focus on the fundamentals, you’ll find ways to scale your MIH program and prepare yourself for healthy growth.
Contact Julota to discover data collection and communications tools to help you scale your MIH program better.