Many times a week, Amy Kettleson pulls up to a home in Albuquerque to check in on the resident. Kettleson is a paramedic for Albuquerque Ambulance Service, but she drives a sports utility vehicle, not an ambulance, and rather of taking sufferers to an emergency room, she iis there to make certain that they stay out of one.
Scheduled house calls may appear like a throwback to an earlier period, but they are an essential part of a small, mobile health care effort called the Community Paramedicine pilot program, which was started in the month of January by Blue Cross Blue Shield New Mexico. The objective is to decrease the use of 9-1-1 calls and emergency departments and foster better care and follow-up for certain patients.
The insurer has contracted with Albuquerque Ambulance and American Medical Response to care for high-utilizing Medicaid patients in their homes as part of an initiative to curb unessential hospitalizations and health care costs. About 50 Medicaid recipients gained visits from paramedics in the last month, ranging from a person suffering from congestive heart failure to a baby recently discharged from a neonatal intensive care unit.
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