They're starting on a shoestring budget of just $75,000.
But local paramedics are hoping a job-description-stretching community paramedicine program being launched this month will be expanded quickly, reducing 911 calls and emergency-room logjams.
"Through Ontario Health North...we have been approved for one-time funding to develop a community paramedic program for the district," says Robert Rushworth, the retiring local ambulance chief who's worked for many months with District of Sault Ste. Marie Social Services Administration Board chief administrative office Mike Nadeau, trying to find cash to launch the program.
"This funding will allow us to offer home assessments and care for marginalized and vulnerable populations. The ultimate goal of this program is to avoid emergency department use and hospitalization by bringing healthcare to those who might not have reasonable access to it."
"This initiative will lead to improved health outcomes, will allow patients to stay in their homes longer, and will reduce the need for long-term care placements," Chief Rushworth said in a recent report to the DSSMSSAB.
"Our program will include home visits, remote monitoring, vaccinations, risk assessments and other services that will help keep patients in their home longer, safely and securely," says Kate Kirkham, who took over as chief of paramedic services in November.
"It will offer an opportunity for collaboration between primary care practitioners, our paramedics, and other healthcare representatives throughout the community."
"The goal of this community paramedic initiative is to supplement community-based services as a ‘capacity enhancer,' working alongside home and community care, primary care and other services, to offset reduced bed capacity in hospitals and long-term care homes," Kirkham says.
"I've written more reports requesting community paramedicine to Ontario Health North than any other proposal that I've done in my career," Nadeau said last year.
The $75,000 one-time funding is only part of what paramedics are hoping for as they struggle to keep up with an unprecedented surge in 911 calls.
It's intended to help address challenges faced by hospitals and long-term care homes, which face reduced bed capacity related to COVID/flu surges.
Says Nadeau: "I'm really optimistic that between this small pot of money, which is critical, and the larger pot that we're hopefully going to be able to communicate in January, that it will have a positive impact and start to trend the call volume down. Without any strategic intervention, the call volumes have just been going up year over year after year. We have to try a different approach."
Kirkham is working with McMaster University to launch community paramedicine in the Sault.
"This will give us an opportunity to try out some of our staffing models that we have set up," Kirkham told the DSSMSSAB's December meeting.
"It will also give us the opportunity to try different collaborative efforts with different community members and see what we can come up with in ways to enhance the care that people are getting while waiting for these long-term beds."
Kirkham has also been working with Sault Area Hospital to see if paramedics can help more when patients are discharged.
Not everyone is sure DSSMSSAB is headed in the right direction.
"There are other organizations getting involved in caring for people in their homes. Why is EMS getting involved?" Prince Mayor Ken Lamming asked at the December DSSMSSAB meeting.
"We have a different skill set. We are very comfortable going into different situations where a lot of other resources aren't," Kirkham said.
"Our paramedics are uniquely trained for that. Also, we just have the ability to be quite mobile and to work with different community members. We're very used to being integrated with other services."
"You're seeing this model across Ontario, and actually across Canada, the whole world. They're finding there's a lot of value. It actually reduces the amount of emergency department use. There's been significant improvement in the health care systems in other communities. We'd like to see it here as well," Kirkham told her board.
Ward 4 Coun. Marchy Bruni had similar concerns to Lamming's.
"I'm okay with it, but are getting into a different field now, the EMS?" Bruni asked. "That's my concern. I think a lot of duplication's going to occur. You're going to be going after these other agencies, etc."
"It's a really critical strategy try to reduce the emergent calls," Nadeau said. "We can keep adding ambulances to the levy to complement responding to emergencies, or we can try to get to those people that we're treating anyway and really try to make sure that we're intervening and providing care to them so we keep them stable and non-emergent."
"We don't want to duplicate. I think there's enough of that in health care already," Kirkham said.
"That's why we're going to work very closely with our other community members to develop a program that doesn't duplicate."