The city may spin off the Houston Fire Department’s emergency telemedicine program to a local government corporation in hopes of generating enough funding to support the initiative and, perhaps, even turn a profit.
The city’s chief medical officer, Dr. David Persse, and new Fire Chief Thomas Muñoz pitched the idea to a seemingly receptive City Council Public Safety Committee Tuesday.
The full council is expected to take up the proposal Oct. 28.
Should the body approve the idea, the city would create the local government corporation, and then hammer out an interlocal agreement with the board that would allow the corporation to offer Houston’s Emergency Telehealth and Navigation system, known as ETHAN, to other cities.
Persse and Muñoz told the council committee the program potentially could generate more than $9 million for city coffers in five years.
Under the existing program, which the city began in 2014, some residents who call 911 can speak with an emergency physician to determine the best way to proceed before accumulating ambulance and emergency room costs. Callers, for example, could opt to take a cab to an urgent care clinic for a minor affliction rather than use an ambulance to go to an emergency room.
ETHAN has saved the city approximately $22 million in ambulance costs since 2014 and served more than 37,000 patients, Persse said Tuesday.
As a corporation, the program eventually would be sustainable without the use of general fund tax dollars, partnering instead with insurance companies and neighboring cities, Persse said. Currently, 200 Houston Fire Department emergency vehicles have access to the program.
“This ETHAN is going to be a critical resource for us, as I said before, a force multiplier that allows us to utilize the resources that we have now to respond to those quote, unquote, true emergencies,” Muñoz told the council committee.
This was from October, I’m publishing it from the drafts. It was indeed approved by City Council on October 28 as noted. I had forgotten about ETHAN, but I did note its existence back in 2015. I’m happy to have this reminder about it. The story says that over 90% of the cases on video calls do not need an ambulance, so there’s real value here. Making it into a local government corporation means making it like Houston First, which is a familiar model. The amount of revenue this could generate is modest, but it’s a good idea on its own merits, and even a modest amount of extra revenue – plus the savings of not funding this out of the budget – would be welcome. Now that it has moved forward, I look forward to seeing it succeed.