• Peter S Pang, Megan Litzau, Mark Liao, Jennifer Herron, Elizabeth Weinstein, Christopher Weaver, Dan Daniel, and Charles Miramonti.
• Indiana University School of Medicine, Department of Emergency Medicine, United States of America; Indianapolis EMS, United States of America. Electronic address: ppang@iu.edu.
• Am J Emerg Med. 2019 May 1; 37 (5): 960-964.

BackgroundCommunity paramedicine (CP) leverages trained emergency medical services personnel outside of emergency response as an innovative model of health care delivery. Often used to bridge local gaps in healthcare delivery, the CP model has existed for decades. Recently, the number of programs has increased. However, the level of robust data to support this model is less well known.ObjectiveTo describe the evidence supporting community paramedicine practice.Data SourcesOVID, PubMed, SCOPUS, EMBASE, Google Scholar-WorldCat, OpenGrey.Study Appraisal And Synthesis MethodsThree people independently reviewed each abstract and subsequently eligible manuscript using prespecified criteria. A narrative synthesis of the findings from the included studies, structured around the type of intervention, target population characteristics, type of outcome and intervention content is presented.ResultsA total of 1098 titles/abstracts were identified. Of these 21 manuscripts met our eligibility criteria for full manuscript review. After full manuscript review, only 6 ultimately met all eligibility criteria. Given the heterogeneity of study design and outcomes, we report a description of each study. Overall, this review suggests CP is effective at reducing acute care utilization.LimitationsThe small number of available manuscripts, combined with the lack of robust study designs (only one randomized controlled trial) limits our findings.ConclusionsInitial studies suggest benefits of the CP model; however, notable evidence gaps remain.Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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