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On May 26th, NAEMT hosted a webinar roundtable discussion featuring three distinguished medical directors to discuss how their organizations have been handling triage and transportation decisions during COVID-19, what processes they’ve put in place, and how they hope to continue these practices in the future. Watch the full webinar below, or continue reading for our top seven highlights.

These days, many of our most basic tasks and functions happen using the smart device in our pocket. 

“I need a pizza!” 

There is an app for that. 

“I need a new car.” 

There’s an app for that, too. 

In this digital age, we consume vastly increasing amounts of data. If you think about it, we will never again use as little data as we do today. Every day, all around us, we figure out there is an app for pretty close to everything, from scheduling appointments to checking our banking statement to getting a ride across town. While the phrase “there is an app for that” has become something of a cliché, there’s some truth to it.

In 2017, a group of doctors and scientists conducted a survey study with paramedics to find out their thoughts on the future of EMS. More specifically, they were interested in finding out what paramedics thought about the possibility of using telemedicine in the back of the ambulance. Would video communication technology be able to help paramedics deliver higher quality care for their patients? Or would it be a time-consuming hindrance?

At the time, using video communication for pre- and out-of-hospital care was still considered a novel idea. Many paramedics expressed that the concept was a new one to them, which possibly accounted for the large number of neutral responses. There were also a number of potential problems with telehealth services that concerned them, including background noise, connection errors, interference with patient care, difficulty in set-up and use, equipment damage, and poor video quality.

EMS has traditionally been built around well-established response, treat, and transport protocols. The COVID-19 crisis upended this, expanding the focus beyond time-sensitive emergencies to things like mitigating the demand on local healthcare systems and securing communication for outpatients in medical isolation. These new requirements revealed a deep need for better mobile-first technologies that would enable dynamic communication between the EMS prehospital care teams and all the other hospital clinicians connected to the patient journey. As EMS agencies look for ways to better support patients, telehealth technologies are quickly becoming an indispensable part of their care systems.

In April of 2019, long before COVID-19, the Journal of Emergency Medical Services published a study that followed the success of the Houston Fire Department in using telehealth to provide patients with out-of-hospital care, effectively decreasing costs and hassle for patients who didn’t need transport. They concluded that “given the increase in costs associated with prehospital emergency care, and the increasing burden on these resources from continuous increased calls to 9-1-1, it’s imperative to redesign the traditional delivery system.” And further, they added: “We propose a model where more EMS agencies pursue adoption of telehealth on a pilot basis to determine their role for both acute and non-acute care.”