Question 1

What is DispatchCare?

Accepted Answer

DispatchCare is patient logistics infrastructure for community paramedicine and mobile integrated healthcare: request, broadcast, status, logistics and reporting between hospitals, payers and states on one side and CP programs on the other.

Question 2

Is DispatchCare a CAD or dispatch system for 911?

Accepted Answer

No. Emergency calls stay in CAD. DispatchCare handles scheduled, non-emergency care missions in the home.

Question 3

Does DispatchCare replace our ePCR?

Accepted Answer

No. The ePCR remains the record of care. DispatchCare captures the mission status and the sponsor-required outcome fields only.

Question 4

Do we need an EHR IT project?

Accepted Answer

No. SoFaaS deploys the app into your EHR; Epic hospitals can start from the Showroom listing; a secure web referral form covers everyone else.

Question 5

Which EHRs does DispatchCare work in?

Accepted Answer

Any SMART on FHIR–capable EHR via SoFaaS, VectorCare's SMART on FHIR as a Service: Epic (Showroom-listed), Oracle Health, MEDITECH, athenahealth, CPSI/TruBridge, eClinicalWorks, NextGen and others. Hospitals without SMART on FHIR use the secure web referral form.

Question 6

What is SoFaaS?

Accepted Answer

VectorCare's proprietary tool for building SMART on FHIR apps once and deploying them into any EHR, handling launch, authorization and FHIR mapping per EHR so the hospital doesn't run an integration project.

Question 7

Can RHT funds pay for DispatchCare?

Accepted Answer

Software, onboarding and evaluation for new or expanded CP programs are commonly budgeted as subaward lines under a state's RHT plan. DispatchCare is a vendor or subcontractor to the subrecipient; eligibility is determined by your state's plan and CMS rules.

Question 8

What about non-supplantation?

Accepted Answer

DispatchCare is positioned as new program infrastructure plus evaluation, not a replacement for existing billable services.

Question 9

What do CP programs pay?

Accepted Answer

Nothing to join the network and receive missions. Confirm current pricing with us before you build it into a budget.

Question 10

How does status get back to the hospital?

Accepted Answer

The CP program updates status in the vendor portal or over the API. The hospital sees it in Epic or the web view and is notified on abort or escalation.

Question 11

How do you measure ED bounce?

Accepted Answer

The hospital's own ADT and registration data is joined to enrolled cohorts in the BI layer. No HIE feed is required for a single-hospital view.

Question 12

Which ePCRs do you integrate with?

Accepted Answer

Any ePCR via NEMSIS 3.5 export. Direct pulls through vendor partner programs are on the roadmap.

Question 13

Is patient SMS included?

Accepted Answer

Yes: visit-window notification, confirm or reschedule, and a post-visit message.

Question 14

How often do reports actually go out?

Accepted Answer

Most sponsors want a quarterly narrative plus CSV, but the underlying export can run on any cadence: weekly for an internal program review, monthly for a payer, quarterly for a state RHT office. The data is the same; only the cut date and audience change.

Question 15

What happens if a crew closes a mission without the outcome fields?

Accepted Answer

The mission cannot move to Complete until the required outcome fields for that mission type are entered. If a field genuinely does not apply, it is marked not applicable with a reason, so it shows up as an explained gap in the export rather than a blank cell.

Question 16

How does this map to Rural Health Transformation reporting?

Accepted Answer

RHT award reporting asks for program-level reach, utilization and outcome measures tied to a funded intervention. DispatchCare's mission and outcome fields are structured so a state office can roll them up into its own RHT template without a separate data call to every subrecipient.

Question 17

Can a field be corrected after a mission closes?

Accepted Answer

Yes, with an audit trail. Corrections are logged as a new row referencing the original mission ID and timestamp, so a reviewer can see what changed, when, and by whom, rather than a silently overwritten number.

Question 18

What happens if no program accepts the mission?

Accepted Answer

The referrer sees the mission sitting in Received with an elapsed timer, not silence. After a configurable window it can be re-offered to a wider territory, escalated to a program coordinator, or returned to the referrer to route manually.

Question 19

Can two programs accept the same mission?

Accepted Answer

No. The first qualified accept locks the mission and every other program's view updates to Assigned elsewhere within seconds, so crews are not dispatched to a visit someone else already took.

Question 20

What if a program loses connectivity in the field?

Accepted Answer

Status updates queue on the device and sync when the connection returns; the mission stays in its last known state in the meantime rather than showing a false negative. Sustained outages surface as a stale-status flag so a coordinator can check in by phone.

Question 21

Can a mission be marked urgent?

Accepted Answer

Referrers can flag a mission's clinical window, for example within 24 hours of discharge, and matching favors programs with capacity inside that window. DispatchCare does not triage or replace 911; anything emergent goes to CAD, not to broadcast.

Question 22

How long does it take a program to start receiving missions?

Accepted Answer

Once territory, protocols and credentials are entered, a program can go live in days, not months. There is no EHR integration project on the program side; the portal and mobile app are the interface.

Question 23

What happens when a visit cannot be completed as planned?

Accepted Answer

The crew records the exception (no answer, patient declined, needs escalation, transported instead) and the mission closes with that outcome rather than being left open. The referrer is notified immediately on any escalation or abort so nothing waits for a quarterly report to surface.

Question 24

Can a program serve multiple hospitals, payers or a state office at once?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Coverage, protocols and capacity are declared once; missions from any credentialed referrer route through the same queue, and reporting can be filtered by sponsor so each funder sees only its own cohort.

Question 25

How does equipment and durable medical need get communicated?

Accepted Answer

Equipment, supplies, interpretation and mobility needs travel as structured fields on the mission itself, set by the referrer or added by the crew, so a walker or interpreter request is not buried in a free-text note the next person has to find.

Question 26

How long is data retained?

Accepted Answer

Configurable. The default meets the RHT requirement to retain records at least three years after the final report.

Question 27

What data do we send in, and what comes back?

Accepted Answer

You send a cohort file: member identifiers, eligibility window and the mission template to run. DispatchCare sends back mission status, visit outcome fields and exception reasons, joinable to your own claims and utilization data.

Question 28

How is member data protected?

Accepted Answer

Data moves under a BAA on a minimum-necessary basis: the fields a mission needs to run and report, not a full chart. See the security page for retention and access-control detail.

Question 29

Do we need a separate agreement with every program?

Accepted Answer

No. One contract with DispatchCare reaches every credentialed program in the network, so a multi-county or multi-state cohort does not require a separate agreement with each local program.

Question 30

Is there a minimum cohort size?

Accepted Answer

No fixed minimum. Cohorts range from a single high-risk panel to a regional population; coverage depends on which programs are credentialed in the counties involved.

Question 31

Can we decline a mission that doesn't fit?

Accepted Answer

Yes. You only see missions that match the counties, protocols and hours you declared, and you can decline any individual mission that isn't a fit.

Question 32

Do we need new hardware or equipment?

Accepted Answer

No. Missions are worked from the vendor portal on any device your team already uses; there is no equipment purchase or install required to join.

Question 33

Can we leave the network later?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Coverage, hours and participation are yours to change or end at any time; there is no lock-in to keep receiving missions.

Question 34

How long does an integration take to go live?

Accepted Answer

Hospitals without SMART on FHIR can start the same week with the secure web referral form. A SoFaaS launch into a SMART on FHIR EHR is typically the shortest integration project your IT team will run, since SoFaaS handles launch, authorization and FHIR mapping.

Question 35

What security review does an integration need?

Accepted Answer

The same review any BAA-covered vendor goes through: access controls, audit logging and retention are documented on the security page for your IT and compliance teams.

Question 36

Is DispatchCare a different company from VectorCare?

Accepted Answer

No. DispatchCare is a VectorCare product, built on the same coordination platform VectorCare's health-system customers already use for patient logistics, applied specifically to community paramedicine and mobile integrated healthcare.

Question 37

What does DispatchCare intentionally not do?

Accepted Answer

It is not a 911 CAD and not an ePCR. It does not dispatch emergency calls and does not replace the clinical record of a visit; it coordinates the referral, the mission and the reporting around visits that CP and MIH programs already run.

Question 38

How do funds actually reach a community paramedicine program?

Accepted Answer

CMS awards funds to the state. The state's approved plan sets out uses, and the administering agency executes subaward agreements with subrecipients: hospitals, EMS agencies, health centers and other local organizations. Those subrecipients may then contract with vendors for specific deliverables. Confirm the exact subaward process against your state's published plan.

Question 39

Does our organization need a single audit?

Accepted Answer

2 CFR Part 200 sets a federal expenditure threshold above which an organization must undergo a single audit. Whether you cross that threshold depends on total federal awards expended in the year; confirm your status with your grants office or auditor.

Question 40

How long does it take to stand up a program under RHT?

Accepted Answer

There is no fixed federal timeline. It depends on your state's plan, the subaward execution schedule and your own protocol and staffing readiness. Build in time for medical director sign-off, EMS scope-of-practice confirmation and a pilot cohort before full rollout.

Question 41

Do we have to competitively procure a vendor?

Accepted Answer

2 CFR Part 200 procurement standards generally require a documented, fair process appropriate to the dollar amount, on top of your own organization's procurement policy. Confirm the applicable method and documentation with your grants office before selecting a vendor.

Question 42

How much did each state receive?

Accepted Answer

CMS announced first-year awards on Dec 29, 2025, with per-state amounts ranging from $147 million to $281 million. Confirm your state's specific figure against the CMS award notice before citing it anywhere.

Question 43

What credentials do you check before missions start?

Accepted Answer

You attest to the counties, protocols and hours you're credentialed and staffed for when you join. DispatchCare does not independently verify state licensure; that remains between your agency and your state EMS office.

Question 44

Can more than one crew from our agency work missions at the same time?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Any number of staff can be added to your agency's account, and missions route to whoever on your team is logged in and covering that territory at the time.

Question 45

How do we start a conversation with DispatchCare?

Accepted Answer

Book a demo or reach out through the contact form; we'll walk your team through the referral and mission flow before you commit to anything.

Question 46

Can we combine cohorts from more than one program area?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Cohort templates are defined per population, so a rising-risk cohort and a post-discharge cohort can run at the same time under the same contract, each with its own cadence and outcome fields.

Question 47

Can we add fields beyond your standard outcome set?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Mission templates can include sponsor-specific fields alongside the standard reach, delivery, follow-through and utilization measures, so a state or payer requirement that isn't already covered can be added without a separate system.

Question 48

Who can see a sponsor's scorecard?

Accepted Answer

Access is scoped to the sponsor's own referrals and cohort. A hospital, payer or state office sees the missions tied to what it sent in, not another sponsor's data on the same network.

Questions buyers ask first.

Everything, in one place

See a mission go from the chart to the home and back.

Questions buyers ask first.

Everything, in one place

What is DispatchCare?−

Is DispatchCare a CAD or dispatch system for 911?+

Does DispatchCare replace our ePCR?+

Do we need an EHR IT project?+

Which EHRs does DispatchCare work in?+

What is SoFaaS?+

Can RHT funds pay for DispatchCare?+

What about non-supplantation?+

What do CP programs pay?+

How does status get back to the hospital?+

How do you measure ED bounce?+

Which ePCRs do you integrate with?+

Is patient SMS included?+

How often do reports actually go out?+

What happens if a crew closes a mission without the outcome fields?+

How does this map to Rural Health Transformation reporting?+

Can a field be corrected after a mission closes?+

What happens if no program accepts the mission?+

Can two programs accept the same mission?+

What if a program loses connectivity in the field?+

Can a mission be marked urgent?+

How long does it take a program to start receiving missions?+

What happens when a visit cannot be completed as planned?+

Can a program serve multiple hospitals, payers or a state office at once?+

How does equipment and durable medical need get communicated?+

How long is data retained?+

What data do we send in, and what comes back?+

How is member data protected?+

Do we need a separate agreement with every program?+

Is there a minimum cohort size?+

Can we decline a mission that doesn't fit?+

Do we need new hardware or equipment?+

Can we leave the network later?+

How long does an integration take to go live?+

What security review does an integration need?+

Is DispatchCare a different company from VectorCare?+

What does DispatchCare intentionally not do?+

How do funds actually reach a community paramedicine program?+

Does our organization need a single audit?+

How long does it take to stand up a program under RHT?+

Do we have to competitively procure a vendor?+

How much did each state receive?+

What credentials do you check before missions start?+

Can more than one crew from our agency work missions at the same time?+

How do we start a conversation with DispatchCare?+

Can we combine cohorts from more than one program area?+

Can we add fields beyond your standard outcome set?+

Who can see a sponsor's scorecard?+

See a mission go from the chart to the home and back.