New grants continue S.W.I.F.T services to lower non-emergency visits

Officials say ambulance rides happen way too often here on Delmarva, especially when they're not needed.

But in Wicomico County they're trying to change that with the Salisbury Wicomico Integrated First Team or SWIFT program.

The team recently received $185,000 in grant money that will continue their efforts to help those people who call 911 for non emergency issues.

"We run a list every month to see who's had five or more calls to 911 in the past couple months. We take those folks and we do that outreach. We have our nurse practitioner, we have our team of nurses and medical assistance supporting this team as well as our paramedic," explains Kathryn Fiddler, VP of Population Health for PRMC.

It's something that may happen more than you think. Salisbury Fire Department's EMS receives over 2,000 non-emergency calls for assistance every year. More than two-thirds of those calls end up with an ambulance ride to PRMC, which exhausts both EMS and emergency department resources.

Salisbury Fire Chief Rick Hoppes says, "Two firefighter paramedics and an ambulance and maybe even a fire engine depending on the type of call which then turns into a transport to PRMC, which turns into an emergency department visit, which turns into additional costs to the healthcare system and costs to the actual patient themselves."

Since kicking off the program seven months ago, they are already seeing some success.

"What's happening now we're getting to folks proactively. We're doing this outreach, we're getting them set up with any services they need and what we've seen is over a 50 percent reduction in utilization of the 911 system to those community members that were serving," explains Fiddler.

Even though they are only seeing 20 patients once a week to start, emergency services has already seen a 34 percent decrease in 911 calls from those enrolled.

"When you consider that those 20 patients called 911 at least five times many of them far more times than that one gentleman was 25 times in one month, so it's a lot of over utilization of an emergency resource."

We're told most of the grant money will go to fund the EMT position for the next two years.