CHARLOTTESVILLE VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – When UVA Health launched its Community Paramedicine program in 2022, sending medical personal out into the field to help patients who might otherwise have visited the emergency department with non-emergency questions, the program relied on a single sedan.
And while the car got the job done, as the program has grown – and with the goal of being able to reach more and more patients – the community paramedics needed to upgrade their wheels.

“A lot of our patients live in very rural areas, so the sedan isn’t necessarily equipped to carry specific medical equipment or get into you know an area that requires four-wheel-drive or manage a rural area in inclement weather,” Novella Thompson, the hospital administrator
for population health, told Cville Right Now.

Friday, the program celebrated a significant donation from Carter Myers Automotive to address that need. The company, a family-owned, Virginia-based business that traces its roots back to Petersburg in 1902, gifted the program a new four-wheel drive Ford Explorer, an invaluable tool as the community paramedics continue their work.

UVA Health was seeing more and more non-emergency patients seeking answers to medical questions by visiting the emergency department. Doctors and administrators knew something had to be done.

So, in July 2022, they launched the Community Paramedicine program, bringing medical answers to patients instead of the patients coming to them.

“It’s wherever they are. It can be in their home. It can be on the street. It can be in a homeless shelter,” Thompson said. “It’s about meeting patients where they are and uncovering what is sending them to the emergency department again and again and again.”

The community paramedicine program sends trained paramedics to patients’ homes, helping them manage conditions like diabetes or heart disease and to overcome social barriers to becoming healthier.

The paramedics can help explain diagnosis, go over medication plans and even help patients find programs to help pay for prescription
drugs or get transportation to appointments.

In one recent example, an elderly patient kept returning to the emergency department with urinary tract infections.

The paramedic team, after a home visit, determined the patient could not get into their shower because it was a stepover shower. They
helped that patient apply for funding for a bathroom remodeling, complete with a walk-in shower.

Any UVA Health patient is eligible to opt into the program. The Community Paramedicine team can monitor which patients have visited
the emergency department four or more times in a 60-day window, a sign that some level of intervention could both benefit the patient and
reduce the workload for the emergency department.

“We try to proactively work with those patients to better understand what’s going on and help them better utilize the services we have at
UVA Health,” Thompson said.

Of course, to do that, UVA Health’s paramedic teams have to be able to actually get to those patients.

That’s where the second, more versatile vehicle comes into play.

It’s just part of what Thompson sees as room for the program to expand.
When it launched three years ago, it had two community paramedics, a pair of personnel with over 35 combined years of experience as
paramedics, handling the work. The team is now up to three paramedics and Thompson is working to secure funding to add a psychotherapist to the roster, to have the option of providing a “crisis mobile unit that has both the clinical and mental and behavioral health skillsets.”

As for the original sedan the program has been relying on since it got rolling, Thompson said that car has been well maintained and will
remain an active part of the growing fleet.