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Kissimmee Fire responders will be able to connect patients with health care professionals via iPad through Tele911. They’ve been training on the system, which goes live Monday. PHOTO/KEN JACKSON
The Kissimmee Fire Department will be one of the first departments in Florida to work with a new system that integrate telemedicine and patient navigation into its Emergency Medical Services.
Medical responders have been training on the Tele911 platform, which will go live in Kissimmee beginning June 6 (Monday).
The program will free up emergency response units for more calls, like pressing trauma calls, by reducing the number of Emergency Room ambulance transports for residents who call 911 with non-emergency medical issues.
Patients who may not need immediate ER transfer — or those who outright refuse it — will be evaluated by KFD paramedics, using a checklist to determine if they are stable and can participate in a live telehealth visit. Those who show disorientation, unclear speech or judgment patterns or have abnormal vital signs will still require transport.
“It addresses a problem nationwide,” KFD Chief Jim Walls said. “This company’s located in California and uses it in Oakland and Los Angeles. The town of Palm Beach uses it, and when we thought about using it I called their chief and said it works great for them.
“We get a lot of non-emergent calls. This will let a doctor, linked in to an emergency room via our iPads, treat a patient right there, talk to them face-to-face and determine who needs to go to the hospital and don’t. They can even prescribe medication. That frees us up to respond to, say, a kid drowning, heart attacks, the 911 calls that save a life.
“Plus, the guy who’s having a full-blown heart attack who refuses to go to the hospital, we can get an ER physician on Tele911 to tell them we need to take him or he could die.”
The telemedicine platform can allow select stable patients to be treated and released on scene. Those patients will also receive a next day follow-up by a Tele911 social worker to provide them with linkage to primary care and social services.
The goals of these on-scene telehealth consults with an emergency physician are to improve outcomes and help patients obtain ongoing care, allow KFD paramedics to offer an even higher level of patient care, and reduce response times for actual emergencies.
Walls calls it, “A framework for follow-ups.”
“The big thing for us is a doctor calls them back within 24 hours to set up social services and get them the resources they need for the future instead of 911 calls,” he said. “We might take someone to the hospital, a week later they call 911 again. Hopefully, now we can get them the services they need in just one call.”
For more information about Tele911, visit www.tele911.com.
