Jim Poltrock is the Division Chief of Emergency Medical Services for Kenosha Fire Department and has been since 2008 and with KFD for 26 years. He is the son of former Fire Chief and Rotarian Jerry Poltrock, but Jim never got to serve under his dad, as he joined KFD 7 years after Jerry's retirement. Jim spoke to us today about Mobile Integrated Healthcare (MIH) or Community Paramedicine, as it is called in other cities. What is MIH? It is the provision of non-emergent healthcare using patient-centered, mobile resources in the out of hospital environment - assisting with chronic disease management, preventive care, pathway int the healthcare system, and post discharge follow-up. MIH is non-emergent, makes home visits, proactive, integrated and value added. MIH will help to identify underlying health problems by doing a safety evaluation, developing relationships, educating and advocating with and for the patient. MIH collaborates with with many other services/departments (i.e.health department, ADRC, hospitals/clinics - KFD) to help the patient. MIH will obtain vital signs, provide assistance with medication reconciliation and refill, provide telehealth and make patient referrals as needed and calling the patients physician to inform and update. They will also confirm that the patient has working smoke detectors and CO2 detectors in the home. In 2019 KFD assisted with 10,597 patients. 49 people were 6.6% of these calls (~14 calls/person!). Top 115 callers accounted for 10.89% of calls. One individual called 52 times! He said these patients often have a chronic disease, no insurance and unable to manage the disease. Jim went to UW Milwaukee School of Nursing to receive his CPT certification, 200 hours of on-line training, followed by clinicals. He has completed an application thru Advancing a Healthy WI Endowment fund, asking for $400,000 to initiate the full program here. We hope he gets it, Kenosha is behind the times with this program and it will benefit our community greatly! Keep up the great work Jim and KFD! Thank you!
