The California Paramedic Foundation is proud to recognize the 2020 Nicholas Rosecrans Award Winner: Dr. Kevin Munjal and the Mt. Sinai Community Paramedic Program (CPP). The Mt Sinai team protect high-risk seniors by ensuring they received timely and necessary care in the safety of their home during the initial onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City.

The Mt Sinai team recognized that high-risk seniors often face acute-on-chronic health events in which they cannot wait for important evaluations to rule out significant causes, but if those significant causes are ruled out can often stay at home and avoid unnecessary emergency hospital visits. They also identified that many of these health events resulted in 9-1-1 utilization despite patients being connected with robust primary care teams and networks.

The Mt Sinai team leveraged EMS providers to work ahead of these 9-1-1 calls to provide early assessments and navigate the patients back into their primary care teams. Furthermore, they built their community paramedicine program in a scalable manner with the ability to onboard and train EMS providers in a quick and safe manner. This design choice would prove invaluable during the initial COVID-19 outbreak that faced New York City and dramatically increased the needs of high-risk seniors in their community.

Dr. Munjal at their team have been successful in diverting more than two-thirds of the CPP patients from unnecessary 9-1-1 activation and/or emergency department visits. They have seen lower re-request rates than typical emergency department post-discharge return rates. They have also seen high rates of admission when patients are found in need of a transport to the hospital. All pointing to their accuracy and success as a program. To learn more visit: https://partner.mountsinai.org/web/mspps/initiatives