Anne Montera, MHL, BSN, RN
Eagle County, Colorado
Anne Montera, MHL, BSN, RN
Director of Integration
Hippo Health
President
Caring Anne Consulting
Eagle County, CO
Anne has been a public health nurse, policy advocate, and partner with the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Community in Eagle County, Colorado for decades.
Anne: “Eagle County was hit very early in the COVID crisis. We started seeing the same per capita rates of infection as New York City.”
Eagle County had limited PPE and faced projections that 40% of the local healthcare workers would be infected.
Anne saw a moment of alignment.
Anne: “I’ve been working with EMS systems on a recent policy change called ET3, which allows EMS to bill for ‘treatment in place,’ instead of only receiving payment for transporting a patient to the hospital. I’d also been working with a primary-care technology platform, Hippo Health, in my consulting practice. I knew it could be converted to use for public health, and the new ET3 parameters would allow us to bill for these visits.”
Anne brought together EMS, Hippo Health, the ET3 policy guidelines to stand up a new model of care for her county.
Today, for non-acute 911 calls, Eagle County EMS dispatches to a patient’s home, and conducts a virtual visit using the Hippo Health telemedicine platform while sitting outside.
Anne: “Besides caring for patients, my priority was to take care of our providers. I did 1:1 education with all the paramedics in the county to get them bought in. It takes the eye of a nurse to understand everything a person needs to feel cared for. Everybody is scared, but to date, Eagle County has not had a single infected EMS provider.”
