photo by: Matt Resnick/Journal-World

Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical Chief Rich Llewellyn and LDCFM Data Analyst McKenzi Ezell, field questions fro Douglas County commissioners during a work session on Wednesday Dec. 20, 2023.

A special two-person team with Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical will soon start visiting some frequent users of emergency medical services, offering them resources and education that might reduce how often they have to call for help.

It’s called the Mobile Integrated Health Team, and LDCFM Chief Rich Llewellyn and Division Chief Kevin Joles gave Douglas County commissioners an overview of it during a work session on Wednesday.

Joles said the idea of the program, which is not expected to roll out until mid-January, is to cut down on repetitive “high-utilizers” of emergency medical services and free up more resources for the most urgent fire and medical calls. To do that, the team will visit these “high-utilizers” and offer them nonemergency services — such as blood pressure and blood sugar checks — and also ask about why they’re calling so often and connect them with other resources that might help them.

“What resources can we connect them with?” Joles told the Journal-World. “Why are they not going to the doctor? Why are they not taking their medication? Why do they live on the third floor of a building when they are unable to walk? All these scenarios where some people are unable to help themselves, we’re going to give them the opportunity to get some help by connecting them to the resources that they may just not have had a clue are existing in Douglas County.”

This wouldn’t just help the people who are making the calls; it also would allow the department to devote more of its resources to more serious situations that require an immediate response.

“We don’t want to be tied up taking emergency units out of the field and spending hours with individuals,” Joles told the Journal-World. “There may be an individual who calls for an ambulance or a fire truck 30 to 40 times in a month. And if we’re able to reduce to one or zero calls, that’s a lot of savings, and less wear and tear on vehicles and on our folks that work for LDCFM.”

The new program will accept referrals from first responders who go out to a call and think the person could benefit from the Mobile Integrated Health Team. The team won’t show up immediately — Joles said it could be the next day — but they’ll follow up with the person and offer them the nonemergency services after the initial medical response.

“For example, if we visit somebody for a lift-assist because they fell down and are unable to help themselves back into it, we’ll send a fire truck out there to lift that person back up, and then see what happens next,” Joles told the Journal-World. “If that’s a person that they feel like it’s going to happen again and again, then they’ll be referred to Mobile Integrated Health.”

Participation is voluntary for the people who are visited by the team, Joles said, and the team won’t charge anything for its services.

“They don’t have to take services — there is no requirement — it’s just an opportunity for them to get some connected resources with all of the agencies that we support,” he said.

The two paramedics on the team have already been selected, and Joles said they are “veterans in the emergency services game, but saw a different path for their future going forward, and that’s why they were selected for this role.”

Joles said the paramedics were excited for their new roles, even though “just showing up at people’s houses and saying, ‘Hey, do you need some help?'” is not what they’re used to doing.

The Olathe and Kansas City, Kan., fire departments also have mobile integrated health teams in place, Joles said, and those services have yielded positive results in their communities.

In response to a question from Commissioner Karen Willey, Joles said he was unsure about the full capabilities of the program and how its goals and metrics should be set.

“I think by March we will probably have a really good understanding of what they will be able to do,” Joles said, adding that LDCFM has requested, but not yet received, a vehicle for the team. “… We don’t want to be flashy with this program, but we certainly want to share that we have a program,”

Overall, Llewellyn said, the goal would be “to get the right resources to the right person at the right time.”

“That’s what this is about,” Llewellyn said. “Not everybody needs a fire engine or ambulance, but there are some people who need help that we haven’t previously been able to provide to them. And that’s really where this program is going to find its sweet spot.”

In other business, commissioners:

• Unanimously approved revisions to the guidelines governing Douglas County’s Natural and Cultural Heritage Grant program. The program itself is a function of the Heritage Conservation Council (HCC), which recommends funding for a diverse range of projects related to cultural heritage in Douglas County. Heritage Conservation Coordinator Kaitlyn Ammerlaan said the changes were intended “to make the grant program more equitable and accessible to diverse applicants and projects.”

According to materials in the agenda packet, the program is expected to have $220,000 to award next year for its general grant program, and that the county also anticipates having $200,000 to award to projects that are focused on “open space conservation, access and knowledge sharing.”