Community members can help reshape how health care works in Ouray County by completing a new survey focused on what’s working and what could be done better.

This spring, residents can participate in listening sessions and fill out an anonymous survey led by Ouray County Emergency Medical Services about health care needs and barriers in the county. The survey will help gather information to create a community paramedic program in Ouray County that could provide health care services in non-emergency situations.

The community needs assessment, called “Pulse on the Community,” is being designed and administered in partnership with Ouray County Public Health, the Colorado School of Public Health and the Telluride Foundation.

How and why it’s happening

The community needs assessment has been in the works for about a year and originated from the idea of creating a community paramedic program that could provide in-home care, medication management or chronic disease monitoring among other services.

Community paramedics can fill health care gaps in places where resources can be hard to access, such as rural communities without hospitals or nursing homes.

“People love living here and they sacrifice some of those resources to live here,” said paramedic Cat Lichtenbelt, who initiated the project.

Lichtenbelt said she watched how former Ouray County EMS Chief Kim Mitchell and volunteer paramedic Glenn Boyd informally addressed community needs beyond the scope of emergency care by doing simple things like checking in on their neighbors.

“It just really touched me,” she said. Then she learned about community paramedicine programs and wanted to find a way to bring something similar to Ouray County.

Community needs assessments are often the starting point for creating community paramedic programs because collecting data helps inform the service and secure grants needed to start and sustain those programs. Lichtenbelt said Ouray County’s program would need to be self-sustaining.

“We’re not looking to raise taxes to implement anything,” she said.

The bulk of the community needs assessment is being paid for by an $85,000 grant from the Telluride Foundation.

A Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment grant through Ouray County Public Health is also supporting the effort.

Who is behind the survey?

Three master’s degree students from the Colorado School of Public Health, along with one graduate of the school, will help design, administer and analyze the community needs assessment as part of their coursework for their degrees.

The students came to Ouray County in February to meet with stakeholders and visit the landscape, which helped guide the questions and format of their survey.

Lichtenbelt said one of the most important parts of the trip was having the students drive to Montrose Regional Health and the Telluride Regional Medical Center to gain an understanding of the distance to those hospitals. The students will continue to visit Ouray County in the coming months to complete the project, including holding listening sessions in April.

During their first trip in February, students shared meals and meetings with community members, where they heard about residents’ struggles and shared their own reasons for pursuing the project. One student, Luke Layman, who is originally from Anchorage, Alaska, said his conversations in Ouray County reflected challenges he’s seen back home.

“I’ve seen a lot of people have difficulty accessing care between regions without a road system,” Layman said.

He was most struck by his conversation with Commissioner Michelle Nauer, who shared how she was admitted to the hospital for an infection that had turned septic. Nauer lives alone and said she didn’t feel the need to call an ambulance for her condition but also didn’t feel well enough to drive to Montrose because it was a weekend and the Cedar Point Health medical center in Ridgway was closed. Her kids happened to be in town and ended up taking her to the hospital where doctors treated her and warned her of what could have happened if she didn’t come in. It’s not the first time she’s been in that situation.

Nauer said a community paramedic program would have really helped someone in her position and believes the survey is an opportunity for residents to share their similar stories and needs.

How to access the survey

Lichtenbelt said project partners want to gather survey responses from 40% of year-round adult residents. It’s not clear how many participants that would amount to.

She said the survey also needs to incorporate information from all types of community members.

“I want the skeptical people. I want to hear about the people who are not in town a lot. I want the people who live here,” Lichtenbelt said.

To accomplish that, project leaders will make the survey available in as many places and in as many formats as possible. Residents can fill out the survey on their own by using a QR code on their own devices. Project leaders will also provide opportunities to fill out the survey on paper or on tablets during visits to community hubs like churches, grocery stores and coffee shops. The survey should take less than 10 minutes to complete, and participants have a chance to earn gift cards or other rewards for completing the survey.

The survey will close May 11. Click here to take the survey. You can also sign up for a listening session by calling 970-988-0216 or emailing clichtenbelt@ourayco.gov.