By Joseph States
Lake County News-Sun
LAKE COUNTY, Ill. — Lake County leaders praised the recently launched Mobile Integrated Healthcare program, a fairly novel model meant to take some strain off the area’s hospitals and emergency services.
MIH coordinator Erik Christensen is a lieutenant with the Wauconda Fire Protection District, and a driving force in bringing the program to life.
While a mobile integrated healthcare program is not a new concept, Christensen said, it’s relatively new to Illinois. The state initially began looking into the program model several years ago for rural areas. Rural residents are often long distances from hospitals, but not local fire departments, he said.
“It was designed to act as that kind of bridge between the patient and the hospital by having local EMTs, or in our case local paramedics, provide that intermediary level of care and care coordination,” Christensen said.
Starting in 2018, Lake County fire departments started heavily exploring the idea. Although not as rural as other areas of the state, the model had the potential to address a common challenge for county services.
“We were dealing with a patient population, typically elderly, that was utilizing 911 services greater than the general population,” Christensen said. “What we found was they were using the services more often to deal with chronic illness and disease.”
These “high utilizers” would call 911 services sometimes several times a week for a “litany of different reasons,” ranging from physical or mental health to more social issues, such as food and housing insecurity.
Emergency services, and especially transportation, are expensive, and aren’t set up to handle these types of calls. The MIH model allows these residents to get better care while lowering overall costs, Christensen said.
While efforts took a backseat during the pandemic, Lake County’s program began to take shape in 2022 and 2023 before finally launching in August of 2024. Between the five participating fire departments, Christensen said they’re covering about 175 square miles and roughly 175,000 people.
The grant-funded program also provides better privacy for patients. Rather than an ambulance pulling up and causing a stir for neighbors, they utilize sedans or SUVs with program decals, he said.
Two community paramedics who went through an additional 40-hour training program will regularly visit enrolled patients each week for about 30 days, although specifics vary by case, Christensen said.
While the work looks different than their normal services, he wants the public to understand the value.
“We’re trying to make the patients we see on a regular basis healthier, but we’re just doing it in a different fashion,” Christensen said.
In the program’s first quarter, they enrolled 19 patients. Eleven were discharged within the first three months, and of those 10 did not go back to the hospital in a 30-day period of time. In the second quarter, they had 15 newly enrolled patients. Ten were discharged and six did not return to the hospital within a 30-day period.
Christensen said they were proud of the level of success and patient engagement the program has seen. During a recent presentation to Lake County board members, Christensen shared the results of the program so far and what is to come.
Lake County Board Chair Sandra Hart voiced her support, calling it a “great model” for other departments across Lake County “and beyond.”
“What it’s doing is helping to remove that strain, caring for people in their home and in the community,” Hart said. “This would make a big difference to the hospitals, and actually the quality of life for people who don’t need to take an ambulance to the hospital.”
Lake County Board member J. Kevin Hunter , a retired fireman himself, also praised the program.
“It’s wonderful and it’s long overdue,” he said.
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