Community Paramedicine: A New Approach to Health in Rural Communities

The community paramedicine (CP) concept is becoming widely used in rural communities to assist in maintaining and improving health across economic and geographic disparities. This model utilizes highly trained emergency medical service (EMS) professionals under the supervision of a physician or other advanced practice practitioner (i.e., physician assistants and advanced practice registered nurses; Patterson et al., 2016) to provide a variety of needed health services tailored to community needs. CP has been shown to be effective in many communities and, given these positive results, should be considered in rural communities where geographic barriers limit access to healthcare (Martin & O\u27Meara, 2019). This fact sheet will review the positive impacts that CP can have in a community, the policy required to start CP, and how individuals can advocate for CP in their community