Ariola asks about hospital liaison unit pilot ending
Ariola asks about the pilot program placing EMTs at hospitals to speed handoffs. Miano says the hospital liaison unit was ceased at the end of May after showing only a small reduction in hospital turnaround time, and those members were returned to ambulances.
We spoke earlier, Chair Narcisse was talking about once the ambulance gets to the hospital, and I know that there was a pilot program for
EMTs to be at the hospital, so this way the ambulance didn't have to remain, they could hand off to a medical professional.
I don't know if that...
That pilot program is still in existence and has it been replaced by something?
So we ceased that pilot program back at the end of May.
That was called the hospital liaison unit, and what that did was it had an officer and an EMT in 13 hospitals throughout the city.
And when a low-acuity call was transported to the hospital, if they met that criteria of being low-acuity, then they would take over the patient's
care report and provide triage to the nurse, allowing that ambulance to return back to service.
While we did see a small decrease in hospital turnaround time, the greater impact on the system was not seen.
And we felt that it would be more valuable to reduce response times by having those members back on ambulances to respond to calls.
So we did cease that program.
However, in times of...
mass casualty incidents or large volumes of patients being transported to a hospital, we will activate an officer to respond to the hospital as a liaison to be able to better assist through that triage process with the hospital.
And since you are in contact with the hospitals, have you had productive conversation with them regarding handoff,
EMTs getting back on the street, whether or not they would not accept a patient for a certain mental illness?
And have you had conversations with the hospitals within the H&H system?
Yeah, and it's not just specific to H&H.
It's with all hospitals, right?
We have borough commanders, and within the boroughs we have divisions.
Those chiefs routinely with the designated Office of Medical Affairs physician that oversees that borough or that division routinely meets with hospitals to discuss
statistics, metrics, and work on improving, setting goals and improving on any areas that we can.
Okay.