Milwaukee VA Medical Center

The plan, which began as a partnership between the Milwaukee VA and West Allis Fire Department, has expended to four other area departments (Photo by Benjamin Slane).

A ground-breaking partnership with area fire departments that allows pre-enrolled Veterans to be taken directly to the Milwaukee VA Medical Center after making a 911 call has been selected as a finalist for the prestigious 2019 Hooley Award, which recognizes industry innovation.

The Hooley Awards recognize innovators and thought leaders, honoring their involvement, creativity and passion in three categories: Innovation, Service and New Frontier.

The project allows Veterans who receive medical care at the Milwaukee VA, to be pre-identified by voluntarily providing their name, address and status as a Veteran to show up in the 911 system.

This helps determine if the Milwaukee VA is the most appropriate destination for emergency medical care.

The Milwaukee VA is a finalist in the New Frontier category for its 911 partnership program, believed to be the first of its kind in the nation. Winners will be announced at a conference in St. Paul, Minnesota on July 24.

“They have three different categories and ours is in the New Frontier, so really looking at how are fire departments, EMS and health systems leveraging information technology in a new way,” said Ben Thelen, Emergency Department program manager at the Milwaukee VA

“To the best of my knowledge, the VA has never been nominated, let alone a finalist for this,” said Thelen, who also is an Army Veteran.

The Milwaukee VA program began in the summer of 2018 as a joint project with West Allis Fire Department. It has since expanded to the communities of Greendale, St. Francis, and Hales Corners. The most recent partnership is with the North Shore Fire Department, which provides service to seven municipalities in the northeast section of Milwaukee County.

There are about 4,300 eligible Veterans in those service areas and slightly more than 800 have signed up, or about 19 percent, Thelen said.

“In our EMS volume from West Allis, which will be a year in August, their volume, or the number of Veterans they’re transporting to us, has increased by about 20 percent since this program started,” Thelen said. “And, of the patients they transport, usually each month is between a quarter and 30 percent, are signed up in the program. I’m not a research person, but there’s a nice correlation.”

“To us, that means that the people who are signing up are actually calling 911 and then ending up here,” he said. “In the past, they weren’t using 911 for whatever reason or EMS wasn’t bringing them here.”

Captain Daniel Tyk, North Shore Fire Department (left) and Ben Thelen, Milwaukee VA after North Shore joined the 911 program.

Jason Schaak, the interim deputy chief of community risk reduction at the West Allis Fire Department, said the program has attracted the attention of other fire departments and municipalities.

“As we get some software situated in some neighboring communities, their Veteran population is massive,” said Schaak, who developed the program with Thelen. “And, once they get on board, which they’ve expressed interest in already, I think we’ll definitely see those large numbers and that larger influx.”

The project, called Improving ED Access Through EMS Collaboration, initially was funded by a Spark Innovation Investment grant from VA. The program then received a Seed-level grant, which is the next level of funding.

“It’s exciting in what we were able to accomplish, it’s also more exciting in what’s to come in the future,” Schaak said. “What we developed for the VA in identifying Veterans and getting them to their medical home, is really a foundation for where we’re going in the future.

Thelen said the availability of medical transport also helps prevent Veterans who are too ill to be safely driving themselves to the VA. About 25 percent of the VA’s Emergency Department patients are Veterans seen for mental health or substance abuse issues, which the VA is trained to address.

“The root of our project was, ‘Why aren’t Veterans using 911? Why are they driving here really sick and delaying medical care?’” Thelen said. “That’s how we started. How can we help Veterans use 911 and it turned into what it is now. I think this is the direction EMS and health care systems are heading, more integration and communication and collaboration. I think we were just one of the first to actually try to put it into practice.”

Nominees for the Hooley Award are received from all over the world. Last year’s New Frontier winner was from the New Jersey Department of Health for an interstate workgroup that brings states together to share information about the opioid epidemic. Other New Frontier finalists were from Florida and Minnesota.

In 2017, New Frontier finalists hailed from Florida, New Hampshire and Queensland, Australia.

In addition to the Hooley Awards, Thelen and Schaak also will be presenting at the EMS World Expo in October in New Orleans.

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