Mobile response unit saves time, cuts costs
Mobile response unit saves time, cuts costs
Employers use new service for minor care
Precision Castparts Structural in Portland, OR, slashed its workers’ compensation claims by roughly $83,000 last year for its 2,500 employees. That’s great news for this self-insured employer, whose average medical expenses dropped $600 per workers’ comp claim.
An airplane parts manufacturer, Precision Castparts is among 40 Oregon employers who contract with American Medical Response of Portland to receive on-site minor emergency care for their employees. "The idea is so simple and effective that it’s amazing no one started doing it sooner," says Mike McMahon, manager of mobile health care for American Medical Response.
And, it’s simple. For a capitated annual fee that costs Precision Castparts between $15,000 and $17,000, American Medical Response sends a mobile response van equipped to handle minor emergencies such as strains and sprains to the work site to treat employees. Employees receive treatment on-site and return to work, if able; or if necessary, they are taken to a physician.
"The van can arrive on-site within 15 minutes with a trained emergency medical technician [EMT]," says David G. Wheeler, BSCE, workers’ comp manager for Precision Castparts. "Supervisors call in to a radio dispatcher who triages the call. If an employee has chest pains, dizziness, or is bleeding, the call is a 911 call and an ambulance comes to transport the employee, but if it doesn’t require stitches or injections, the van comes, treats, advises, and the employee returns to work, if able."
Wheeler says it’s like have a clinic on-site but better, because service is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. "To employ a nurse would cost me roughly $100,000 by the time we paid for a nurse’s salary, malpractice insurance, and supplies," Wheeler says. "This service is costing me about $17,000, so I’ve already saved about $83,000, and I have coverage around the clock, not just Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.," he says, adding that the mobile response unit also gives the employer more control over which employees have time-loss injuries.
As part of the contractual agreement, Precision Castparts transferred liability costs to American Medical Response. "They were willing to extend coverage and provide us with the certificates of insurance," Wheeler says.
"Oregon has a very high basic quality of training for EMTs," McMahon says. "All our dispatchers are trained emergency medical dispatchers. We have basically the same setup as a 911 center. We’re an ambulance company. We know how to triage calls according to patient condition for appropriate care."
McMahon says the mobile response van provides other benefits for employers and employees, such as relieving a supervisor with no medical background of the burden of deciding whether an employee requires acute care or not.
The system works well, McMahon adds. In the three years American Medical Response has been sending the van to Oregon workplaces, there has been only one employee who complained about the treatment. "It was a second-degree burn, and the patient didn’t tolerate pain very well. But one complaint in three years of hundreds of thousands of cases, that’s not bad," McMahon says.
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