If a patient has had a fever for a few days, he or she needs to get to the hospital, but does that patient really need to get there via ambulance? This is the question that drove one physician-emergency rescue team to outfit special station wagons to pick up noncritical patients to save both ambulance and ED resources, according to a report from Kaiser Health News.
In Centennial, Colo., Rick Lewis, chief of emergency services at the South Metro Fire Rescue Authority, and Mark Prather, MD, an emergency room physician, tackled the resource allocation problem by creating mobile care units in station wagons. If the patient onsite is safe and stable, the mobile units are equipped to treat that patient in his or her home, avoiding a trip to the ED.
The South Metro team mobile units include kits for closing wounds, a miniaturized medical lab for blood testing, a nurse practitioner who can prescribe medication and a connection to Colorado’s EMR network, which ensures responders have patients’ medical records on hand for appropriate treatment.
All told, patients can receive treatment outside the ED from the mobile unit team for $500 or less, which is a fraction of the cost of an ambulance ride. At this time, insurance doesn’t pay for the care, but Dr. Prather is currently in talks with several major insurers and is hopeful this will change soon, according to the report.
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