I thought of a good idea for EMTs and paramedics who work in the field. Here in LA County, we all have a good chance of holding up the wall and never really know how long we'll be holding up the wall. Sometimes you'll be transporting to the ER wondering how long you'll have to wait for a bed for you patient. Here's my idea, I created a twitter account, usernamer: @LACoEmRm; the user name stands for Los Angeles County Emergency Room. If you use twitter, add the user name, and whenever you're holding up the wall, tweet @LACoEmRm with your location, if you're BLS or ALS, how many crews are ahead of you, and how long you have been waiting for. People who follow @LACoEmRm will be able to scroll down through the tweets and can see what to expect. My idea is still in the beginning stages and I thought I'd try it out to see how it works out. Please do help me out and add me on twitter, @LACoEmRm and lets give this a try. Let me know of any ideas that can improve this idea and spread the word around.
Holding up the wall
- Thread starter emanresu
- Start date
While I admire the creativity aspect of your idea, there is already system's in place that can officially provide the information concerning ER saturation and/or diversion status. One such program started in Texas (EMsystem) provides users with up to the minute hospital status for all classification of patient needs such as cardio, trauma, neuro, etc. This particular program is also secured with multiple permission levels to enhance it's productivity.
I see multiple concerns with using Twitter in this case. First and foremost, if you are involved in patient care, holding up a wall or not, you shouldn't be tweeting. Imagine a family member seeing you on twitter vs. providing a perceived level of care you should be offering their loved one. Second, you fail to account for the aspect of acuity. There could be 5 crews in front of you, and you could tweet the info as suggested. But then what happens when you allow human error to enter this equation (i.e. poor triage, a well known factual presentation of many EMS systems, especially in Southern Cali). Now you have some BLS crew out there who see's your tweet and decides to take their chest pain patient to another facility further away. Honestly, I see it as recipe for disaster. Add to it the inability to provide real time updates and you create a situation worse than it actually presents. If I was a hospital administrator and I found out some EMS crew told others to not come to my facility because they've been there for an hour, yet cannot guarrantee a real time update, I'd be pissed. If I knew I was losing potential revenue and vital patient statistics (way above the comprehension level of most in EMS) because an outside unofficial source put their two cents worth in, I'd be looking for someone's job.
Again, creative, but honestly not very practical.
I see multiple concerns with using Twitter in this case. First and foremost, if you are involved in patient care, holding up a wall or not, you shouldn't be tweeting. Imagine a family member seeing you on twitter vs. providing a perceived level of care you should be offering their loved one. Second, you fail to account for the aspect of acuity. There could be 5 crews in front of you, and you could tweet the info as suggested. But then what happens when you allow human error to enter this equation (i.e. poor triage, a well known factual presentation of many EMS systems, especially in Southern Cali). Now you have some BLS crew out there who see's your tweet and decides to take their chest pain patient to another facility further away. Honestly, I see it as recipe for disaster. Add to it the inability to provide real time updates and you create a situation worse than it actually presents. If I was a hospital administrator and I found out some EMS crew told others to not come to my facility because they've been there for an hour, yet cannot guarrantee a real time update, I'd be pissed. If I knew I was losing potential revenue and vital patient statistics (way above the comprehension level of most in EMS) because an outside unofficial source put their two cents worth in, I'd be looking for someone's job.
Again, creative, but honestly not very practical.
JPINFV
Gadfly
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Sure you do if your IFT. In fact you have more of a choice since IFTs shouldn't be "emergencies," thus companies can refuse to transport to some hospitals (cough PIH cough). There's nothing requiring IFTs to go to any specific hospital outside of the agreement between the company and the facility.