Optimizing Trauma and Emergency Services for Strategic Growth

By Amanda McClure, system vice president of Emergency and Trauma Institute, system transportation and regional referral center, Premier Health

Premier Health has supported EMS agencies through outreach and participation in many community events by offering medicine services. As community resources continue to be challenged, the asks have become greater. The EMS outreach team collaborated with the sports medicine and marketing teams over 2024 to align our services and ensure our commitments did not surpass available resources. To streamline and not miss requests, we have developed a new process. All requests should be directed to our event medicine team via email at PHPEventMedicine@premierhealth.com.

Last year presented an opportunity to optimize our transportation resources by contracting with a new vendor, Midwest Medical Transport (MMT), for ALS and BLS transportation, which has led to a dramatic increase in the value of these services. MMT has demonstrated strength through a commitment to data transparency and operational collaboration. Relationships with Uber and Lyft for transportation of hospitalized patients upon discharge have proven more dependable and have great value in hospital throughput when transportation is a barrier to discharge. Lastly, an interdisciplinary team developed a policy and process for appropriate hospitalized patients to be self-transported between hospitals, sparing ambulance resources for patients with medical necessity.

The Regional Referral Center has implemented new workflows to ensure patients are connected to the right services in the appropriate hospital and the best level of care, allowing optimal use of our bed capacity across the system. These workflows culminate months of collaborative work with hospital operators, medical staff leaders, and our digital health and technology team, as we implemented the EPIC Transfer Center Module in September. The Regional Referral Center remains committed to facilitating communication between providers and admissions to vet and place hospitalized patient referrals. Evaluation and optimization of resources will be an ongoing focus to support the strategic growth of Premier Health.

Back to the January 2025 issue of Premier Pulse