Using paramedics to help hospice patients avoid unwanted care

A hospice patient's end-of-life desires are most often thwarted when well-meaning loved ones see the patient in some sort of distress. New programs ask first-responder paramedics to work with hospice programs to better honor a person’s end-of-life wishes.

A mobile health project in Ethiopia gives any health worker with a smartphone access to the information they need to deal with emergencies during childbirth. Now it's being scaled up to reach 10,000 health workers across Africa and Southeast Asia by 2017.

In India, failing road safety and accident respondent systems have created a nationwide crisis. SaveLife Foundation is addressing these problems head on, through outreach, legal battles, and innovative solutions to ineffective government policy.

Virtual reality is being used as part of medical education providing a way for nurses and other medical workers to better understand how a patient may experiencing their surroundings. Virtual reality modules have been created for blind, colorblind, dementia, and dying patients.

A Denver group called Dispatch Health is an urgent care "delivery" service. Instead of requiring the patient to come to the hospital, Dispatch Health come to the patient's home and administers care on site. The group is working to be more economical than a traditional hospital as well, with services from $40-50 for insured patients and a flat rate of $275 for the uninsured.

Access to medical resources improves the effectiveness of health centers. In the village of Fuka, in Nigeria’s Niger State, NGOs such as the RAiSE Foundation and TY Danjuma Foundation have stepped in to support the local Primary Health Centre (PHC). Multiple initiatives, including home visits and the distribution of mosquito nets, have built relationships with the community; the most successful aspects have been the Mama Kit, given free of charge to pregnant women at the PHC, and the donation of an emergency ambulatory tricycle.

After realizing that too many people were calling 911 for issues that were not medical emergencies in Richland, Illinois, a program was launched to act as an intervention strategy. After the start, calls decreased by over 40 percent, which helped make emergency vehicles and responders available for more serious calls.

When Henrico County Fire Department began to respond to calls for people exhibiting signs of coronavirus, they began utilizing recommendations of how best to stay safe. Although restrictive, this new playbook helps emergency responders stay safe by "limiting the number of responders that go into a facility" and encourages nursing homes to bring patients "as close to the ambulance entrance as possible."

The Wraparound Project at Zuckerman San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center turns gunshot victims' hospital stays into "a teachable moment," by providing them with services aimed at helping them avoid a repeat injury. Getting shot once is a key risk factor for a second injury, particularly for gun violence's most common victims, young Black men. Wraparound is one of the nation's oldest hospital-based violence intervention programs. It has helped about 850 clients, mostly with mental health counseling, housing, and jobs. The program is associated with a decreased reinjury rate in San Francisco.

To aid in postpartum hemorrhage care, the Kisumu Medical and Education Trust distributes uterine balloon tamponade kits that can be used to stop excessive bleeding and prevent death after other measures have failed. The kits have been provided to more than 1,300 healthcare facilities in 23 countries and over 6,000 healthcare workers have been trained to use them.