Integrated: the Community Paramedicine podcast

When EMS medical directors  are highly engaged with their paramedics and take on leadership roles crafting professional practice legislation to advance MIH, everyone wins. 

Charles Blankenship gives an update from the International Roundtable on Community Paramedicine 2022 held in Orlando

Dr Judith Welsh, Chief Experience Officer and MIH Medical Director and Sean Lyons, Community Paramedic Supervisor and Project Manager for the Cleveland Clinic talking about what happens when one of the world's leading healthcare innovation institutions empowers paramedics as part of a multi-disciplinary team to help address clinical and social complexity 

John Mikula from the Transcare/Crisis Center of Tampa Bay MIH partnership talking about robust data integration, barriers to care focused interventions, and just a great look at a program successfully helping patients reduce their demand for emergency services and hospitalization.

First episode for 2021 and a great conversation with a couple of guys helping pioneer MIH in Wisconsin. Their focus on education, building on existing lessons learned from other programs, and integrated data collection are all excellent takeaways for those of you getting started.

Still getting caught up and great news this week as vaccines roll out. In all of this, possibly THE most important addition to the MIH team has been the pharmacist. Victoria Reinhartz, PharmD has been involved with a very progressive program since 2015 and the impact has been huge.

Apologies for the delay, 2020 is taking a toll on all of us.  This one was worth the wait! Value based health strategies have a habit of sounding like corporate boardroom chess, pretty far from reality for municipal public safety agencies... at first glance. Williamson County, Texas is a standout example of how a Community Paramedic program within a 3rd service model EMS agency can (and has) leveraged relationships and data to move beyond grant funded start-up into sustainable and growing. 

Getting caught up, I had the chance to talk with Ari Breslauer recently about a very successful partnership between a hospice agency and a start-up MIH program. Some really great takeaways about defining and articulating value in ways that help answer everyone's concerns from the patients to the clinicians to the payers

James Mason is one of those folks who has seen, done, and touched a whole bunch of different things, done them well, and then figured out how to integrate the pieces into something even bigger. In October 2017 as a QIN/QIO consultant he lead a CMS Special Innovation Project (SIP) for "Community Paramedicine, or simply "CP in WV". and ever since has been involved in some capacity.

Talking with author and educator Brian Broome about patient experience and how the way we listen makes all the difference.

Check out his article in The Guardian a few years ago that prompted our MIH program to bring him in as a speaker

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/28/opioid-epidemic-selects-white-victim-black-addict