CARES Program provides 6-month report to Belmont Co. Commission
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ST. CLAIRSVILLE - Belmont County CARES Program director Chad Zambori provided the Belmont County Board of Commissioners with the program's six-month report during Wednesday's regularly scheduled meeting.
"The CARES program is a community paramedicine program. The goal of the program is to hopefully keep people out of the hospital, reduce 911 calls, and reduce hospitalizations," Zambori said. "Along with that we go into people’s homes, meet them where they’re at, and hopefully fill any gaps that are needed, whatever that may be. Whether it be they don’t have a doctor at the present time, we have a nurse practitioner on staff that’s able to do an evaluation, write prescriptions, order home health, or hospice, if needed."
He added that there are many different facets of what the program does.
Zambori said that the program also deals with a lot of mental health issues throughout the community.
"We see from birth to death, A to Z. So it’s hard to say exactly what we do and put a finger on one thing. We try to fill gaps where it’s needed. We try to help out however it’s needed and be the last call that that person makes," Zambori said. "That’s not necessarily what happens every time, but we try to make sure that they get the answers that they need and hopefully help them out wherever they’re at."
In the past six months the CARES program has had a total of 952 interactions with 423 home visits, and 277 mental health interactions. It had 3,263 phone contacts totaling 11,934 minutes for a total of roughly 200 hours of phone calls.
Zambori added that the program received 842 referrals in the six month period.
"We receive referrals from many different agencies throughout the county. We work very closely with Adult Protective Services and Job and Family Services. We get referrals all of the time from Senior Services's Meals on Wheels drivers. We’ve had multiple referrals over these past six months because the Meals on Wheels drivers, they’re the people seeing these people every single day, and they’re able to see if there’s a certain change, or if there’s something going on," Zambori said. "We work very closely with them. We’re more than happy to go out if their driver sees any change in someone, and just to do a little check-in."
He added that the referrals sometimes amount to a bigger issue but sometimes amount to nothing.
Zambori said that he is grateful for the referrals because it puts the resident on the program's radar.
"We’re able to start having some sort of interaction with that person. So, we receive referrals from fire and EMS departments if they’re seeing multiple falls or a patient calls 911 multiple times, they’re able to refer them out to us and get the ball rolling of how we could help if there’s something that we can do from our side," Zambori said.
He added that as a community paramedicine service, he believes that the program is innovative for the Southeastern Ohio area. He added that the program is still continuing to look forward and advancing in the services it offers.
Commissioner Vince Gianangeli replied that when looking at the program's report he noticed that all of the CARES Program's interactions have increased by 50%.
He then thanked Zambori and the program for stepping up and handling the increased interactions and said that he unfortunately believes that the interactions will continue to grow.
Commissioner JP Dutton said that the numbers speak for themselves.
"I know you said we’re still sort of one of the few in our region doing something like this, and the question would be, why? Maybe everybody should be doing this? Well, it just doesn’t happen that easily," Dutton said. "The creation of it doesn’t happen that easily, someone has to put a lot of time and attention to even start the initiative, which we are fortunate to have here in Belmont County with Cumberland Trail [Fire District]. But then all of the partners have to come on board as well, but then you have to sustain this too, and that’s a whole other thing."
He added that it’s one thing to get a program like the CARES program up and running but another thing to continue to support it.
Dutton said it takes a vast amount of quality work to maintain the program and he believes that it is being done.
"It’s touching so many people. Our departments do a fantastic job of helping Belmont County residents every day as it is, but there are still some gaps. There’s always gaps here and there, and that’s what CARES is doing is filling those gaps. Again, we can’t say enough, we appreciate it very much," Dutton said.
Senior Services of Belmont County executive director Lisa Kazmirski added that without the CARES program, senior services would have to hire additional staffing.
"We rely on these guys every day that we do business. We rely on CARES and I appreciate the program," Kazmirski said.
Zambori added that every October, the CARES program goes to every senior center in Belmont County to meet with the residents using the facilities to make them comfortable with reaching out to the program.
Belmont County Job and Family Services director Jeff Felton said that the program provides high quality medical services, health services for the county's seniors.
"We don’t have the education, skill and the training to do that, so it’s a wonderful program to have," Felton said.
He added that while speaking with DJFS Fiscal Advisor Jack Regis Jr., he discovered that unless there’s transportation to a hospital, Medicaid cannot be billed for ambulance services.
Felton said that he believes that the county needs to increase its efforts to try to convince Medicaid to be able to be billed when EMT services are provided on site without transporting to a hospital.
He added that he is thankful that the CARES program is able to fill that gap left by Medicaid in Belmont County.