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Alternative Delivery Models

As EMS agencies play an increasingly vital role in the overall delivery of healthcare, their services and modalities need to diversify to provide patient-centered, economically sustainable care to their communities. The model of providing a full EMS response to each and every 911 call, and transporting all patients to an acute care hospital ED, regardless of level of patient acuity, is proving to be unsustainable in many communities, and does not always provide the most patient-centered care to meet the needs of the patient at that moment.

PWW|AG works with EMS agencies and organizations across the United States to customize solutions and incorporate alternative delivery models to help improve EMS system performance, patient-centered care, and economic sustainability.

Our services include:

  • Restructuring dispatch processes to incorporate clinical patient navigation options, pre-dispatch disposition to refer low-acuity callers to non-EMS services, implementing tiered dispatch and related dispatch processes
  • Implementing deployment plans that match response capabilities to patient needs, such as tiered deployment, MIH integration and other solutions
  • Implementing evidence-based field modalities designed to safely and effectively determine whether patients assessed would benefit from transport
  • Incorporating non-transport modalities including telehealth, treatment in place and related services
  • Implementing evidence-based policies, procedures and protocols for transporting patients to alternative destinations, including clinics, health centers, mental health, addiction, counseling and substance abuse treatment centers, including the development of agreements with these alternate sites to accept EMS patients
  • Developing patient follow-up processes to ensure that patients receiving alternate modalities have received appropriate care
  • Designing and implementing stakeholder and public education strategies to improve the rollout of these programs