I am an EMT in Los Angeles county. I was wondering if an ambulance company is required by city, county, state, ems or what not to have one working 24hr shift and if so are they to be as bls or what not... Please assist if you can. Thanks Scot
no, not at all. sorry for the confusion... but if the ambulance company is to have one if not more 24hr shift working. Was seeing if a rule mandated for companies to have one in order to be listed as an ambulance company...
Both services I worked for we're 24hr shift and 12 hour shift. The one being a private EMS that did 911 and IFT 911 was 24 hour shift with one 24 hour IFT (that could still respond) and also a fire based ambulance service that had 24 hour shifts and 12 hour shifts depending on what station you worked out of.
no, not at all. sorry for the confusion... but if the ambulance company is to have one if not more 24hr shift working. Was seeing if a rule mandated for companies to have one in order to be listed as an ambulance company...
I'm not 100% sure for LA, but OC and LA protocols and procedures are generally fairly close together, so I don't feel too bad about generalizing (and I'm not going to dig through LACoEMS's cruddy website either to verify). In OC any company offering ambulance transport has to have an ambulance in service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The county doesn't care if that ambulance is crewed by 12 2 hour shifts, 1 24 hour shift, or anything other combination. How individual companies decide to run their schedules is up to them. For example, the company I worked for in OC ran almost exclusively 12 hour shifts [1 24 hour unit] when I started and bumped the 24's up to 4 (maybe 5...) units with one of the 24s not being staffed 7 days a week. This company ran, not counting the Riverside of dedicated children's hospital units, 30-40 units on any given weekday.
Hmm, lets see if I can word it another way? I have been working on this shift for over 3 years. I work for a private ambulance company that runs IFTs. The shift in question is a 24hr rig. The talk the company is removing that shift and taking out the 24hr truck and keeping all rigs as 9, 10, and or 11 hour shifts. But my question is, is their a ruling for an ambulance company to be required to have one working 24hr shift to be listed as an ambulance company? Or can they run on any shift they see fit?
But my question is, is their a ruling for an ambulance company to be required to have one working 24hr shift to be listed as an ambulance company? Or can they run on any shift they see fit?
It's been said already but in my area there is no law or regulation stating the shifts required. Our 911 contracts state that we must have x number of rigs on duty at any given time as well as x number of rigs available 24/7 but they could care less if we work 1 never ending shift or 12 2 hour shifts daily as long as the appropriate number of ambulances are staffed 24 hours.
I'm not real familiar with IFT contracts but you may or may not be required to provide 24 hour staffing if you have no 911 contracts it depends on the fine print in your IFT contracts.
I find it hard to believe that there would be a law anywhere in the country that requires a person to work a 24 hour shift, in fact never seen a contract that mentions shift length at all since that should be company discretion, contracts usually only state the hours that a certain rig must be available.
You might see shift requirements in contracts for service.
The only regulation the government would put on EMS hours would be a MAXIMUM - How is it that truckers can't drive for more than X hours a day... but it is OK for us to drive Emergency Vehicles on 36 and 48 hour shifts?
as long as there is coverage for 24 hours a day, the government/county/state/city could care less how many men/shifts it takes to do the job, or for how long they do it.
The only regulation the government would put on EMS hours would be a MAXIMUM - How is it that truckers can't drive for more than X hours a day... but it is OK for us to drive Emergency Vehicles on 36 and 48 hour shifts?
I've always wondered about that. I'm in an area with 24 hours maximum for fire and 8 for private companies. I think they wrote the rule assuming that private companies would run almost constantly while fire would have breaks, but it doesn't always work out like that...
You might see shift requirements in contracts for service.
The only regulation the government would put on EMS hours would be a MAXIMUM - How is it that truckers can't drive for more than X hours a day... but it is OK for us to drive Emergency Vehicles on 36 and 48 hour shifts?
I agree; but here is the reasoning by some administrators. Document exactly how much time is actually spent behind the wheel of an EVO. Now, that is not the medic portion. Also compare with how many truckers are union in comparison to EMT's.
Even air services that follow CAMTS requirements of allowing 24 but the number of hours spent on missions is added up. It is better than nothing but still can have some pretty tired crews out there.
Even FWLA have a separate authority on EMS shifts and basically, working in EMS...plan on getting screwed. Even the number of paid hours, in comparrision to working hours, etc. is ridiculous. I know of EMS services that have a routine 72+ hour shifts.
