In their latest annual report, leaders behind Greater Sudbury’s Community Paramedicine programs report helping 2,326 people in 14,211 total visits during their latest fiscal year.
The effort, funded mainly by the province, includes a few programs under which paramedics travel throughout the community with health promotion education, check in on at-risk residents and reduce 911 calls by transporting non-urgent patients to the hospital.
Community Paramedicine commander Julie Ward and clinical services lead Allison Hicks delivered a presentation on the program to the community and emergency services committee of city council earlier last week, at which they highlighted the program’s latest successes.
Among those enrolled in the program, they report a 24-per-cent reduction in emergency department visits and a 19-per-cent reduction in hospital admission within the first six months.
Locally, Community Paramedicine paramedics completed 5,597 home visits last fiscal year (April 1 to March 31), of which 975 were unplanned same-day urgent requests which would have otherwise been directed to 911 or the emergency department. In more than 70 per cent of these cases, they report providing assessment/treatment which allowed the patient to stay home.
In a patient and family survey, more than 90 per cent respondents said that the Community Paramedicine program “helped maintain or improve the client’s health and well-being, and helped the client feel safer in their living arrangement,” according to last week’s report.
The programs include:
- High Intensity Supports at Home, where paramedics join other health agencies in offering people wrap-around care on a short-term basis in their own home. There were 93 unique patients this latest fiscal year. “Success is often measured by the patients who have successfully transitioned from home to long-term care, avoiding unnecessary admission to the hospital,” Hicks said, whose report cites 46 as being successful in this regard.
- Sudbury Housing Wellness Clinics are held in common rooms of geared-to-income multi-unit housing complexes. Last year, 1,259 people were seen at 158 wellness clinics.
- Rapid Mobilization Table, which Community Paramedicine is part of as a member of Community Mobilization Sudbury. The group meets twice per week to collaborate on addressing situations of “acutely elevated risk.” Community Paramedicine is one of the top-six agencies, and is involved in 69 per cent of cases.
- Shelter visits. Community Paramedicine paramedics have been visiting homeless encampments to provide wellness checks.
- Care Transitions Community Paramedicine Program. Paramedics provide home visits and interventions under medical oversight “to patients with complex chronic disease to assist them in transitioning from acute care to community and/or self-supported in-home care.”
Between these programs, Greater Sudbury’s Community Paramedicine program has 2,326 patients enrolled.
Local Community Paramedicine has been around in varying degrees since 2014, and was granted $6.5 million from the provincial government over three years in 2020, and afforded an additional $2 million to fund it to the end of 2025-26.
In the latest fiscal year, it received $2 million from the Ministry of Long-Term Care, $1.1 million from Ontario Health and $140,000 from the City of Greater Sudbury (for the wellness clinics).
City Fire and Paramedic Services Chief Joseph Nicholls told the committee that they’d joined the Ontario Association of Paramedics Chiefs in advocating that this funding formula continue, affirming, “That work and that advocacy continues at that level.”
In their presentation, Ward and Hicks included some of this advocacy, noting that the average cost per patient per day among those enrolled in the Community Paramedicine programs is $8 per day. By comparison, an acute care hospital bed is $1,274, basic long-term care beds are $65, and home and community care is $102.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.