Ep. 236: The Lifesaving Benefits of Community Paramedicine
Guest: Nancy Kotani, BC Emergency Health Services
Life on the frontier in British Columbia is fantastic so long as you’re healthy.
Get injured or, worse yet, suffer from a chronic condition and up until now, health care was usually a sirens-blaring ambulance trip to a hospital more than 100 kilometers away.
It was a problem – a big problem – for many reasons. Then one day, a solution emerged: members of the Ambulance and Paramedics Union came up with a way of creating sustainable employment of ambulance paramedics in remote communities and, at the same time, dramatically improve the well-being of the people they served.
The community paramedicine program came to life and now provides high-level care for elderly patients in 99 remote and rural communities throughout the province. The benefits include but are not limited to: aging in place for seniors; families remain united; health outcomes are improving; and paramedics are now assured a stable job.
This is a made-in-BC solution to a BC health care challenge – a remarkable success story.
We invited Nancy Kotani of the Chief Transformation Office of BC’s Emergency Health Services to join us for a Conversation That Matters about the remarkable success story that is improving lives in remote and rural communities in BC.
