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W W W. M A I N E B I Z . B I Z 27 S E P T E M B E R 2 1 , 2 0 2 0 F O C U S H E A L T H C A R E / W E L L N E S S Services and the town of Jackman. Key to the program is the telehealth connection between the paramedics and emergency room doctors. Busko, a former paramedic, based the program on a similar one in Alaska and "came up with using paramedics in a new and different way," Dwyer says. "Paramedics are really good at the skills piece," says Butch Russell, chief operating officer at North East Mobile Health Services. "e doctor is really good at telling if the patient is stable, or needs further care." e two team up under the program, through a telehealth connection at St. Joseph Medical Center, with the para- medic as the hands-on caregiver and the doctor as the guide. Russell says the program could take a lot of forms in different com- munities, and the model in Jackman could even change. "It's still in the development stages," he says. Once it's been going for a while, the bigger picture aspects will begin to emerge. A tenacious community "A lot of this project is a credit to how tenacious that community is," Dwyer says. "ere are 800 people, but it can feel like 8,000." For many years, the Jackman clinic was run by Mid-Maine Medical Center of Waterville, providing round- the-clock emergency care, as well as primary care and an attached nursing home. MaineGeneral kept the health center after Mid-Maine and Kennebec Valley medical centers merged in 1997 to become the health care system. But it was hard to sustain economically, and in 2014, MaineGeneral pulled out of the primary care end, and PCHC stepped in. MaineGeneral continued to run the 18-bed nursing home, which provided nurses and 24-hour call service needed to keep round-the-clock emergency care going at the health center. When MaineGeneral closed the nursing home in September 2017, that ended. "At that point, people started say- ing 'We need an alternative way to do something here,'" says Patricia Doyle, the health center's primary care physician. Since then, emergency care has been provided by Doyle, on call. Emergency medical technicians in the town's ambu- lance — who don't have the same level of training as paramedics — would either meet paramedics from Waterville in Caratunk, about the half-way point up U.S. Route 201, to transfer emergency patients. Sometimes they drove them the two hours to Waterville. 'You take care of this' Under the new program, paramedics will work 48-hour shifts at the health Reimagine Good healthcare is more than good medicine. It's a personal experience that makes you feel calm, strong and confident in the people caring for you. We created the Topsham Care Center to give you advanced medical care and an environment that contributes to your healing, too: seamless, soothing and simple. It's a better place to get better. 105 Topsham Fair Mail Road, Topsham, Maine 04086 207-798-6300 SPECIALTY CARE including cardiology, general surgery, radiology, oncology, and pathology, with on-site lab services. cmhc.org/tcc Your Healthcare Experience Lori Dwyer, president and CEO of Bangor-based Penobscot Community Health Care. The health care system, which oversees the Jackman Community Health Center, is partnering on a pilot program that allows paramedics to provide emergency medical care. P H O T O / M A U R E E N M I L L I K E N Expanding care is the only way to solve the access challenge. We can't physician-hire our way out of it. — Lori Dwyer CEO, Penobscot Community Health Care C O N T I N U E D O N F O L L OW I N G PA G E »

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