The Commission on Accreditation of Medical Transport Systems (CAMTS) has announced that it is now accepting applications for accreditation of Mobile Integrated Healthcare (MIH) programmes. This comes after the release of the first national accreditation standards for these programmes.

MIH is an evolving and expanding field of healthcare focused on providing primary and preventive care to underserved populations. The goals of MIH include increasing access to care, improving health and wellbeing, and reducing hospital admissions, readmissions, emergency room visits and costs.

Care providers can come from any area of health care, but most community MIH services use paramedics in expanded roles caring for clients in non-emergency situations in their homes or other locations. As the MIH and community paramedicine industry grows, accreditation demonstrates that programme initiatives are fair, ethical, consistent, accountable, and patient- and safety-focused.

Jonah Thompson, CP-C, Operations Manager with the MIH programme at Allegheny Health Network and chair of the CAMTS MIH Program Standards Committee, said: “These standards represent a collaborative work intended to recognise the future of both paramedicine and integrated approaches to the delivery of the entire spectrum of care from social services to advanced clinical specialties.

“Input from practitioners and leaders was vital to ensuring the standards recognise the pioneering work being done across the US and around the world.”

CAMTS Associate Executive Dudley Smith added: “We don’t look at these as ‘our’ standards, but as MIH standards that are developed by those that do the job every day.”

Once a programme has been accredited, the accreditation is valid for three years.