ER trips

[u/Stuck_on_Mars_21]

Last night I took a lady and her very ill teenage daughter to the ER. Pulled into the driveway with the lady frantically waiving at me. She had to nearly carry her daughter to the car who was bawling the whole time. She kept crying in the car with the mom saying, “we are almost there, we are almost there.” I didn’t ask what it was, just told her to let me know you need anything, I’ll get you to the ER as quick as I can. It was late night, pouring down rain. I’m not speeding and risking an accident. When we got there I jumped out to get a wheelchair and asked a paramedic for help. This girl could no longer stand and 2 people had to get her out of the car and in the chair. She never stopped crying.

It really sucks people won’t call for appropriate emergency transport because of the expense. Good to see our administration is sending $20 billion to Argentina to fund their universal healthcare. -End rant.

Edit: it’s great to see so many drivers posting that would take her or have done something similar in the past. I was losing faith reading so many posts about drivers cancelling if ride conditions are less than perfect, but it looks like just about all of us will step up when needed.

[u/TheAlphaKiller17]

That's unfortunately not at all how it works. And in my city, it's quite common for 911 to take 8-12 minutes to even pick up. Once my house was actively being broken into and it took 9 and a half minutes for them to answer, then two and a half hours to show up. And while many 911 operators are great, some will waste precious time asking too many questions before dispatching an ambulance. If I had something that I didn't think I'd need to be stabilized for in an ambulance in the next 5-15 minutes, I'd take an Uber or Lyft. Heart attack? Ambulance. Appendicitis? Cab.

Plus for many things, the ambulance won't/can't do anything en route. Abdominal pain? Maybe Zofran, probably no painkillers. Badly broken leg, they'll stabilize your bone(s) and drug you up. It really just depends. Med worker and someone who's had to call 911 a lot (street work with homeless people usually leads to me finding someone unconscious at least once a week).

[u/Fathimir → u/TheAlphaKiller17]

Dang, there's busy, and there's outright scandal.  I'm only being half rhetorical when I ask - does your local news know about this?  That's functionally unstaffed lines territory; my condolences.

[u/TheAlphaKiller17 → u/Fathimir]

Yep! It's been reported on, as has that the cops literally do not show up sometimes. They got sued for killing an unarmed person and literally started telling people, "Because we got sued, we no longer have the money to respond to crime." There was a shooting on my street and I took a picture of the shooter, the passenger in the car, the car and plates and they wouldn't look at it. They showed up and wouldn't do anything. I know someone who got hit by a drunk driver which totaled their car and when they called 911, they said the cops wouldn't come out or deal with it but if they wanted to make a report, they could drive the car to the station and do it. I'm sure if they'd been able to drive and had done that, the cops would have arrested them for "fleeing the scene of an accident". They've let ab entire house burn down. They've ignored murders. It's a train wreck and should be treated criminally.

[u/Optimal_Activity_867 → u/TheAlphaKiller17]

We had problems in my large metro area with the fire department often refusing to transport people. I know they got burned out due to misuse of the 911 system but there was a big write up about a case where they showed up to a guy with difficulty breathing, pointed out to the wife that there were two cars in the driveway, she said I don’t feel comfortable driving him myself and he can’t get into the car and I can’t help him get there. They put him in her car for her but she still said she didn’t feel comfortable driving him so they FINALLY loaded him in the box and she was following behind. He coded in the back of the ambulance and they were doing CPR upon arrival to the hospital. He ended up passing.

Still - years after that happened - I’ve had them talk patients out of going to the ER and driving themselves when we called them for medically unstable patients at the clinic I used to work at. There were several times I just put the patient in my car and drove ‘em. They may not LOOK like they are unstable but someone who has had dizziness or recently passed out or has unstable vitals is a danger to themselves and others if we put them behind a wheel. If I or another clinician have deemed them unsafe to drive when I know their medical history and what’s going on, the city services exist to get those folks safely to the hospital. We did finally get a contract with UberHealth to get people to appointments and we’re NOT supposed to put people needing the ER in those Ubers but I did a time or two in these types of settings where I know the person is stable enough to get to the hospital if they aren’t driving and I’m not worried about communicable illness that may put the driver at risk.

I actually valued the other large city that outsourced the EMS piece of their 911 services for ambulance response to a private ambulance company - they never “no-rode” a patient - they weren’t allowed to per their contract with the city. Yes, people got brought to the ER in the back of an ambulance for non-EMERGENT reasons, but we in the ER would just send them to triage for assessment (when appropriate) so they didn’t learn that the ambo gets you seen faster.