The Role of Paramedics in Integrated Care

Abstract

Health systems look to improve by enacting principles of ‘integrated care,’ but lack guidance on being responsive to local needs. This qualitative study examined the evolving role of paramedics in integrated care, finding that paramedics fill localized gaps in health and social services and serve as flexible, adaptive capacity in health systems. They perform unscheduled response functions and support prevention and primary care, targeting both broad, low-needs populations and more complex, high-needs populations. The findings support that integrated care systems can be enhanced by community-based services accessed through a single-point-of-entry, delivered by a generalist, flexible health workforce that is mobile in the community. This means fostering local organizational networks, allowing local control and experimentation, balancing standardization with flexibility and assessing value at a system level. Further work is needed on governance approaches to enable this, and clarifying the role of paramedics in the skill mix of integrated care teams.