ALS companies in the Bay Area

S

SanJoseEmt

Forum Crew Member
Messages
37
Reaction score
2
Points
8
Hello everyone,

I’m an EMT currently working BLS in the Bay Area and I live in Santa Clara County. Does anyone know the ALS companies specifically in Santa Clara County? And ALS companies in the rest of the Bay Area that hires EMT's?


Thanks
 
There are actually a lot of companies that offer advance life support (ALS) now. The obvious ones are your 911 providers. In Santa Clara County, it is AMR in San Jose. I believe Silicon Valley Ambulance, Falck Ambulance, and ProTransport-1 also have ALS units in Santa Clara County, but they do not usually do 911. As an EMT, it might require some seniority to work on an ALS unit.

There are a bunch of ALS providers throughout the Bay Area.
 
San Francisco is fire based with private backup right?
 
What are the advantages of working for an ALS company that does not respond to 911 calls?
 
DrParasite said:
What are the advantages of working for an ALS company that does not respond to 911 calls?
Click to expand...

I believe a paycheck might be involved.

Not everybody wants to deal with street work. Some people are much better suited for IFT work. If my employer made better use of their ALS IFT trucks, I would happily split my time between transfer and 911. I very much enjoyed the complex, high level, probably should be going on a helicopter but isn’t IFT work. It was the endless stream of nonsense ‘watch the squiggly line and saltwater drips” transfers that broke my spirit. I never stairchaired an ALS transfer. Never had to kneel in puke or blood, never had to search for fingers flung by a saw. I saw zero decomposing corpses on my IFT truck. It was inside work and there was rarely inadequate lifting help. If not for the profundity of calls appropriate for BLS that I did as a transfer medic, I dare say some days on a transfer truck are better than many days on my town truck.

Transfer work can also be far more intellectually stimulating than street work. Vitals O2 Monitor IV Transport. That is, in my practice, 75-90% of my street calls. On the transfer truck, you occasionally have the opportunity to deal with interesting cases and new meds/procedures etc. on the street, pack em up and ship em to the hospital, maybe you treat a complaint or two in you have an appropriate tx in your scope.
 
I think you misunderstood by question (and took some personal offense to it, based on the attitude in your post)... the OP is an EMT working IFT in the bay area.... if he got hired for bay area ALS company, he's still doing IFTs. So I was asking why he wanted to change to an ALS company since he would be doing exactly the same thing, only just driving now.

For most my career, we have BLS IFT (which bored me to death) and CCT IFT (which was like BLS IFT, but the patient was on a cardiac monitor, and was an EMT paired with an RN). Most of the CCT jobs i did were very stable; Although I do agree, a complicated transport with multiple drips and issues is pretty cool, but they were few and far between. I'm still getting used to the ALS IFT, and understanding the difference between CCT and ALS IFT.

But I know I could never do it, but to each his or her own.
 
DrParasite said:
I think you misunderstood by question (and took some personal offense to it, based on the attitude in your post)... the OP is an EMT working IFT in the bay area.... if he got hired for bay area ALS company, he's still doing IFTs. So I was asking why he wanted to change to an ALS company since he would be doing exactly the same thing, only just driving now.

For most my career, we have BLS IFT (which bored me to death) and CCT IFT (which was like BLS IFT, but the patient was on a cardiac monitor, and was an EMT paired with an RN). Most of the CCT jobs i did were very stable; Although I do agree, a complicated transport with multiple drips and issues is pretty cool, but they were few and far between. I'm still getting used to the ALS IFT, and understanding the difference between CCT and ALS IFT.

But I know I could never do it, but to each his or her own.
Click to expand...

While I did misinterpret the meat of your post, I was not personally offended by it. I don’t do transfer work anymore, except when the end of the month is coming at me like a rifle bullet and the bank account isn’t going to go the distance, but I know a bunch of medics in our transfer division that have to turn down rescue shifts regularly because they actually like doing transfer work. I would too, if not for soft ALS or the really BLS transfers.

I guess to some there might be a certain amount of cachet to working PB as a basic. A lifetime ago, I worked for a strictly IFT company that had one P/B truck out of my shop and that was looked at by the basics as “The Show” because it was the only way you were going to do anything but dialysis and discharges. When I got my shift on that truck, I thought I had made it(keep in mind, I had been a basic for less than a year at this point). About a million miles later, everyone of them behind the wheel, the bloom was off the rose for sure, but I admit without reservation that, for a time, I though being a medics driver made me a badass.
 
hometownmedic5 said:
I guess to some there might be a certain amount of cachet to working PB as a basic. A lifetime ago, I worked for a strictly IFT company that had one P/B truck out of my shop and that was looked at by the basics as “The Show” because it was the only way you were going to do anything but dialysis and discharges. When I got my shift on that truck, I thought I had made it(keep in mind, I had been a basic for less than a year at this point). About a million miles later, everyone of them behind the wheel, the bloom was off the rose for sure, but I admit without reservation that, for a time, I though being a medics driver made me a badass.
Click to expand...
Boy isn't this the truth.
 
I’m currently stuck on transfer Hell. Will seriously consider a big pay cut to escape it.
 
SanJoseEmt said:
Hey everyone, I meant 9-1-1. Thanks.
Click to expand...
Alameda County - Paramedics Plus located in San Leandro. Falck Ambulance will be replacing them in a couple of months I think.

Everywhere else (eg San Mateo County, Contra Costa County, Santa Clara County) - American Medical Response

Some Fire Department do their own ambulance transport (eg Berkeley, Albany, Moraga-Orinda, South San Francisco, San Francisco, Palo Alto, Alameda).

Oddly, some fire departments have ambulances that respond to calls, but do not usually transport. Examples are San Jose and Santa Clara City.
 
What ambulances are in SJ and SC fire?
 
RocketMedic said:
San Francisco is fire based with private backup right?
Click to expand...

Right. The privates do a fair amount of 911 backup as well as direct dispatch from IFT contracted hospital ER's. Been away for a while, but I'm pretty sure that's still the case.
 
CCCSD said:
What ambulances are in SJ and SC fire?
Click to expand...
I am a little confused what you're asking.

San Jose Fire Department and Santa Clara City Fire Departments have ambulances, but they do not transport unless it is "SDO11" (very rare, done usually with "ambulance query" when they pull in IFT/BLS ambulances into the 911 system at level 2 or below). They can also transport if the 911 ambulance is late and the patient is either critical or inextremus I think, but I haven't heard that happen.

In Santa Clara County (including Santa Clara City and San Jose), AMR is the only 911 ambulance that transports under normal circumstances except Palo Alto Fire Department does all their own transports.
 
That answers my question. Just never seen full ambos in either agency, just engines and PTs.
 
Aprz said:
San Jose Fire Department and Santa Clara City Fire Departments have ambulances, but they do not transport unless it is "SDO11" (very rare, done usually with "ambulance query" when they pull in IFT/BLS ambulances into the 911 system at level 2 or below). They can also transport if the 911 ambulance is late and the patient is either critical or inextremus I think, but I haven't heard that happen.
Click to expand...
Wait, so your telling me in an urban city, two FF/EMTs or FF/PMs respond to a 911 call in a transport capable ambulance, with all the equipment needed to transport a person like any other 911-capable ambulance, yet they make the patient wait for the commercial provider to show up?

and the taxpayer is already paying the salaries of said FFs (through their regular taxes), as well as for the equipment, yet now they are going to get a bill from the private service when the FD could have taken them to the hospital?

That sounds like a huge waste of resources (sending two transport capable ambulance to a call, with identical EMS training and capabilities, but only the further away ambulance can transport the patient), something I would have thought the taxpayers would want to avoid wasting money on, esp since California is in such a budget crisis (or so I keep reading in the news)

I'm very glad I am not a California resident, because I would be at every city county meeting expressing this inefficiency of that system.
 
DrParasite said:
Wait, so your telling me in an urban city, two FF/EMTs or FF/PMs respond to a 911 call in a transport capable ambulance, with all the equipment needed to transport a person like any other 911-capable ambulance, yet they make the patient wait for the commercial provider to show up?
Click to expand...

If I'm not mistaken, that's the system in parts of Marin county (just north of San Francisco) as well. Rationale being keeping the ALS unit available for that type of call. If the ALS unit gets a call while waiting for the BLS unit, the engine company baby sits the patient. The patient gets a transport bill one way or the other.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top