The Mobile Integrated Health team, which includes two Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical technicians, aims to meet people where they are and help them with their medical needs.
The team aims to address health issues in a way that will help prevent unnecessary use of emergency resources in the future. That can include wound care, chronic disease management, resource navigation and more.
Team members and LDCFM supervisors presented to the Douglas County Commission Wednesday evening about their work since the program launched in December 2023.
Former LDCFM Division Chief Kevin Joles said the team has treated 91 unique patients over the course of 287 visits over nine months. Of those 91, Courtney Simanowitz, one of the two MIH technicians, said the team has treated 38 unhoused people and 53 housed people.
Joles said these medics measure success differently from how they have in the past — in a normal paramedic position, their goal is successful “fast medicine.” That’s generally getting patients to hospitals quickly. MIH work is slow medicine, Joles said. The techs have received training in wound care so they can assist with those kinds of ongoing needs.
Simanowitz shared some success stories the team has seen so far.
LDCFM had one older patient living in an apartment alone without much furniture — only a mattress on the floor for their bed. The patient called 911 14 times for lift assists to help them get out of bed before the MIH team got involved. They connected with local nonprofit 100 Good Women, who helped to find an elevated bed frame for the patient, and that person never had to call 911 just to get out of bed again.
Two other brief stories were included in their presentation to the commission:
• “Patient had made 24 calls to 911 for panic attacks in the 4 months preceding MIH involvement. MIH made a total of 5 visits, providing the individual with education on resources (988, TRC, medications). No more calls have been made.”
• “Referral from Bert Nash H.O.T. (Homeless Outreach Team) for an unhoused individual at a hotel. MIH received specialized training from LMH Wound Care clinic in order to treat patient. Made significant progress on wound care and edema.”
Simanowitz said sometimes the team will get dispatched to calls with emergency crews, or if they hear a call come across the radio for a repeated address, they’ll just go. They also triage calls.
“We look at how many times they’ve been calling, because the higher the call volume, that shows us there’s a more immediate need,” Simanowitz said. “So, when I have somebody who’s called three times before noon, I’m going to want to get out there and see them ASAP. That helps relieve the crews, but that also gives (the patient) the appropriate resource they need in a timely manner.”
Sometimes “We get there and it sounds like we can, maybe in a couple of visits, really help this individual exponentially,” Kim Bahr, the other MIH technician, told the commission. “And then sometimes we peel back so many layers and it’s just like, ‘Oh my goodness, we need a lot more help than we thought we did for this individual’ — and sometimes it takes longer than we had anticipated.”
The team uses a Ford Explorer — far less costly than an ambulance.
The MIH team is going out to camps with the Homeless Response Team for part of the day each Friday, Simanowitz said.
Commissioner Patrick Kelly asked and the team confirmed that yes, without the MIH team, if a person who was unhoused needed medical treatment, LDCFM would have done what it did before the MIH team was created — gone out to see them in an ambulance, Joles said.
“Sometimes there’s a narrative out there that we are creating services for certain members of our population who are more vulnerable. We were providing these services already, in a much more expensive way,” Kelly said.
LDCFM Chief Rich Llewellyn said the work is important because downstream impacts are being reduced. Patients aren’t being transported to the hospital, so they can avoid that cost and burden on themselves and on the hospital.
Most patients the MIH team has treated have been in Lawrence, but there have also been calls in Eudora, Baldwin and Lecompton, Joles said. Commission Chair Karen Willey said she was excited to hear there were more plans to reach out to rural departments to make sure everyone has access to the MIH team.
Commissioners weren’t asked to take any action — the presentation was for information only.
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Mackenzie Clark (she/her), reporter/founder of The Lawrence Times, can be reached at mclark@lawrencekstimes.com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.
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