Emergency Medical Technicians’ Perspectives on a Telehealth Facilitator Role to Expand Home-Based Primary Care: Pilot Study Results

A growing body of literature supports telehealth-enabled emergency medical services (EMS) personnel acting in expanded roles in the pre-hospital setting. While paramedic-based community programs have shown great promise, emergency medical technicians (EMTs), who make up a larger percentage of the total number of nationally certified EMS personnel and generally have fewer options for career growth, are far less utilized. We investigated EMTs’ perspectives on working as telehealth-enabled primary care provider extenders in a pilot program within a home-based primary care program.