MIH, PeaceHealth recognized for top-quality care | Local News

MIH operates through the Ketchikan Fire Department on 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday schedule to bring services to the community on an appointment basis by referral from community partners. According to the city website, the MIH mission “to provide care, with dignity and respect, to the vulnerable populations of Ketchikan” is achieved by performing services that include wound care, fall risk assessments, and medication reconciliation ensuring proper prescription administration.

PeaceHealth Director of Communications and Marketing Kate Govaars said that while nominating MIH for the award, she had the opportunity to learn more about their operations.

“This work that we’ve been doing in collaboration with Mobile Integrated Healthcare has demonstrated some positive impacts on our volumes and numbers in ways that are really supportive of our community and things that we want to see to kind of reduce our respective rates …” she told the Daily News in an Oct. 29 interview. “So as I explored that, I called (MIH community paramedic) Ben (Watson) and I said ‘Hey, Ben, tell me a bit about this.’”

In its early stages before being funded by the city, Govaars said she believed PeaceHealth put $100,000 toward the non-emergency appointment-based medical service.

The most notable way in which the two organizations collaborate, according to both Govaars and MIH community paramedic Ben Watson, is their referral of patients to one another. Recognizing gaps in the community helps to reduce the hospital’s readmission rate and streamline both its and MIH’s ability to provide timely patient care.

A return to the hospital within 30 days of discharge, regardless of the cause, is classified as a readmission.

With respect to hospital capacity, Carolyn Henry — a quality and patient safety manager at PeaceHealth — called MIH “a quality improvement effort that has shown notable data improvement.”

“We were watching our readmissions visibly drop, … and when we went back and looked to see what patients had previously been readmitted and then the decline in that, we could make the correlation with those patients getting this individual support in the community,” Henry explained. “So AHHA typically likes to see OK, innovative work that has a proven quality improvement data (which MIH did).”

The concept of MIH was devised by Fire Marshal Gretchen O’Sullivan and Lisa DeLaet, the latter of whom now works as the Crisis Now community director at the Ketchikan Wellness Coalition.

Watson helped O’Sullivan and DeLaet devise the MIH model. Citing a desire to not imitate another entity’s patient care strategies, he said it was important to tailor the service to Ketchikan’s needs.

While the basic concept of MIH is becoming increasingly popular nationwide, his commitment to meeting patients where they are sometimes results in an approach to health care that he describes as “unorthodox.”

Looking for an example, Watson mentioned an instance in which a patient’s gout had been bothering them more than usual. He had tackled the matter by making a run to the grocery store and buying that person food that wouldn’t provoke their flare-ups.

“A big part of what we do is just, kind of, connect the dots and fill in the gaps,” he said. “So, like, for example: mental health providers may see a patient in their office, but when a patient misses an appointment, maybe they (providers) … don’t get the whole picture of what’s really going on at home.

“They don’t know what it’s like for the patient who (won’t take) their meds. Why are they not taking their meds?” he posed. “We’re kind of like the people who — I don’t want to use the word ‘detective work,’ but that’s kind of what we do. We go out into the community and find out the … reasons (treatment plans) aren’t going the way we plan.”

“What we like to do is facilitate the communication between the different organizations,” he also said, “whether that’s … home health to primary care and social services to outpatient (care).

“You know,” he said, “we (at MIH) are kind of the ones that can go to the patient’s house after services have already been provided and be like ‘Well, let’s just double-check this (detail or doctor’s order) real quick, and make sure we’re on the same page (as the patient).’”

Watson has been operating MIH as its sole community paramedic for nearly a year since his previous partner was terminated from his position on Nov. 12, 2024.

In that time, managing MIH singlehandedly has taken a village.

“A lot of collaboration with outside entities — and then also the staff at the fire department — (have) been very helpful. (Take) Gretchen O’Sullivan: if I need (extra hands at MIH), I can pull her,” Watson explained.

“I can pull line-duty staff for overtime; I can pull off-duty staff if I need; I’ve pulled, like, (Ketchikan Wellness Coalition) employees to come with me on calls sometimes — so I can find people to come with me … Dustin (Larna) from (Resilient Youth and Community), he came with me on a call once, so literally anybody, if I feel that they have the capacity and experience to provide a benefit to the patients, I’ll let them come with on a call,” he said.

One of the largest obstacles Watson faced in the absence of a partner was record-keeping. “Paperwork,” he said. “That tends to pile up.”

As he sustained his work by pulling community resources where necessary, candidates for MIH were interviewed until Marissa Abram was hired.

Abram was brought on as an MIH community paramedic in early October. Watson said that since she joined the team, “It’s already been a lot easier. We’ve knocked out a lot of reports.”

Though Abram wasn’t yet an MIH paramedic at the time of AHHA bestowing the innovation award, she said her work with MIH has already proven “really rewarding.”

“Walking into this (position), I can see how productive MIH has been and what a blessing to the community it’s been,” Abram said. “Just by the patients’ being like ‘Oh my gosh, Ben is the absolute best’ and just getting to know the people in the community has been great. I really love it.”

Govaars commended that “They work with all care settings (at MIH). It’s not just inpatient outpatient, (emergency), or clinics … It’s all these, which is really amazing.”

She expressed that the work of MIH has benefited the entire community — even beyond its 202 enrolled patients reported in July 2025, according to MIH’s “One Year in Review.” As of July, the report indicates, Watson’s MIH work had also been recognized with the State of Alaska Office of Rural Health Community Star award.

“It has compounding economic benefit for the hospital (and) for the community,” Govaars said. “We have fewer … unnecessary ambulance calls, fewer unnecessary transfers to the emergency department so those benefit our taxpayers. … Then (MIH’s services) also, most importantly, benefit the human that they’re (treating).”