A new role for first responders: providing in-home health care
The idea of mobile integrated health is that instead of transporting patients to the hospital, EMTs respond to their needs in their own home.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Dedalo Sousa, an 85-year-old with type 2 diabetes, has seen the inside of a hospital more times than he can remember.
He has a regular doctor. But sometimes, “when he gets scary things, we don’t want to wait for his doctor visit,” said Sousa’s wife, Emilia Torres.
Once it was a cyst on his back. Another time, Torres said, he had something like heartburn.
Torres admitted that the her husband’s emergency room visits are often for “minor things.” She added, however, “I panic when he gets sick.”
That impulse — combined with the fact that health problems crop up outside of office hours, or that even daytime problems can
