Home visits by paramedics reducing hundreds of 911 calls

Hamilton’s paramedics have decreased 911 calls from its most frequent flyers by more than one-third with a program that visits seniors and those with chronic conditions in their own homes.

“That’s hundreds of calls that are reduced,” chief Michael Sanderson told the city’s Healthy and Safe Communities Committee April 23. That is “patients not having an ambulance 911 response and not being transported to the emergency department and having a good outcome from that.”

At at time when hospital off-load delays and a 5 per cent yearly increase in calls are causing response times to rise for the first time since 2014, the community paramedicine program is using prevention to combat ambulance shortages. Last year, the provincially-funded program took on 197 patients who are frequent users of ambulance service, calling 911 up to 90 times a year.

“We are trying to mitigate against the growth in demand by doing something proactive at the front end,” said Sanderson. “With that focus on the small number of patients who are high frequency users we’ve had a 37 per cent reduction in 911 calls.”

Another success has been the CP@Clinic which provides health promotion and prevention programs at nine city of Hamilton buildings focusing on high blood pressure, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, social isolation and falls.

“Hamilton was a leader in this,” said Sanderson. “It’s now being replicated at many different ambulance services across Ontario.”

He says research by McMaster University shows the program has “again reduced the number of calls.” Hamilton is also one of 11 paramedic services to provide remote patients monitoring where paramedics use Wi-Fi in a person’s home to keep an eye on blood pressure, pulse, respirations, temperature, blood sugar and weight.

“That information comes back into a central monitoring station at our community paramedic hub and the community paramedic can look at that and find out whether things are within the normal ranges,” Sanderson told the committee. “It reassures the client and if we see something outside of the norm, the community paramedic can make a contact with the patient either by telephone or going out to do a site visit.”

Sanderson says Queen’s University has evaluated the program and found it reduces 911 calls by 42 per cent. There is hope changes to the Ambulance Act of Ontario will make a further difference as it will allow paramedics for the first time to treat and refer a patient to another health care practitioner or a destination other than an ER.