Hazelwood Amends Contract with SSM Health Care for Emergency Medical, Paramedic Training

The City of Hazelwood has contracted with SSM Health Care for medical direction, as well as emergency medical technician and paramedic training and due to some changes with the hostipatal system, recently had to approved an amendment to the contract.

Hazelwood city manager Edwin Carlstrom recommended and council approved passage of an ordinance to amend an agreement with SSM Health Care St. Louis, owner and operator of SSM DePaul Health Center, for the aforementioned trainings.

The amendment is required becaue SSM changed its emergency department service provider from Midwest Emergency Associates to The Schumacher Group of Delaware, Inc., on January 4.

The city's contract on record lists Midwest Emergency Associates as a contracting party; therefore, the amendment was needed to switch providing companies.

This is the only change to the city's agreement with SSM, according to Carlstrom.

Schumacher Group defines itself as a health care resources that partners with more than 3,000 providers to help treat more than 4 million patients annually.

It is a privately held, physician-driven company, designed to come into hospital systems and improve patient care through emergency medicine staffing and management.

SSM Saint Joseph Hospital -West (SJHW), a 127-bed facility in Lake Saint Louis, Missouri, switched to The Schumacher Group in December 2008.

It reports experiencing improvements emergency department including an 85 percent reduction in door-to-provider time, a 40 percent shorter overall length of stay, and 85 percent fewer patients leaving without treatment.

Emergency Department medical director David Lickerman said provider time is intergral to the ER process.

“We knew that door to provider time was critical in improving patient satisfaction scores, and we had to think outside of the box," he said in the report. “We put mid-level providers alongside the triage nurse with the rule that patients are never to return to the waiting room after going through triage.”

This new process reports shortening triage time from an average of 12 to 16 minutes down to between 3 and 6 minutes. Door-to-provider time plummeted from an average of 2 hours and 40 minutes to an average below 25 minutes.

Similar goals are being developed as targets at DePaul.