COLUMBIA, S.C. — Residents in rural areas of three Midlands counties will have access to quicker health access.
Calhoun, Fairfield and Lee counties will soon have access to health assessments and non-emergency medical care at home thanks to an initiative from the South Carolina Office of Rural Health (SCORH).
The program is called community paramedicine and looks to treat residents on-site by trained paramedics rather than traveling to an emergency room that could be far away.
The three counties that were selected for this program because they are three of eight counties in South Carolina that do not have a hospital.
“We’ve had some rural hospital closures across the country over the past decade or so including several in South Carolina," says Bridget Winston, director of communications for SCORH, "so in counties where there is no hospital, if someone were to call 911 and have an ambulance come and transport them to the hospital you know sometimes 40 to 45 minutes away- if it’s something that could have been treated locally or treated through telemedicine or treated onsite by a paramedic. That just makes the whole process easier and more efficient. So that’s the ultimate goal.”
Paramedics who will go out into the communities to treat patients will go through extensive training and receive a special endorsement on top of their paramedic certification.
"Emergency Medical Services (EMS) provide transportation and life-saving care to patients during their times of most dire need,” said Sarah Craig, director of health system innovation for SCORH. “But transportation to an emergency department in a neighboring county when it is not medically necessary puts a tremendous strain on our rural EMS providers. The community paramedicine model will provide faster and more appropriate care.”
SCORH is able to offer community paramedicine through the Medicare rural hospital flexibility program. They received one of six grant recipients nationwide.
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