Ambulance wait times endangering patients, doctors say

[Martyn]

Ambulance wait times endangering patients, doctors say

New data shows a 77% spike in the number of safety incidents involving ambulances over the past year.

www.bbc.com

 

[Arctan]

In my county, 60-75 Percent of all ambulances are busy.

 

[DrParasite]

In my county, 60-75 Percent of all ambulances are busy.

that's it? in my county it's between 90 and 100%.

As for the topic at hand, I agree 100%. The solution to long wait times is more ambulances. So if the AHJ wants to cut down on wait time, they need to crack open the piggy bank and start spending money on budgeting for more units.

The article states the one person had to wait 10 hours for an ambulance for a patient with a serious head injury. That's insanity, but depending on the situation, it might be acceptable. For example, if your area just got hit by a tornado, and the school and hospital took a direct hit, it might take 10 hours for the backlog to be cleared. However, if it was business as usual? that should be investigated. I'm not saying the ambulance trust did anything wrong, but someone should look into what happened. if you had a house fire, and it took the FD 10 hours to arrive, what would the public response be?

I understand COVID has put a hurt on everything, but at the end of the day, that excuse can only go so far, and the bean counters need to start planning and budgeting for having units out sick.

 

[Mike Hammer]

"I understand COVID has put a hurt on everything, but at the end of the day, that excuse can only go so far, and the bean counters need to start planning and budgeting for having units out sick."

Planning has been atrocious IMO in many places...how do you not account for this?
My area is more rural (county has a pop of ~220k), but is the major medical area for over 500k people. We were required to shut down elective surgeries and other items when our cases were very low, backing everything up. That combined with vaccine mandates and the shortages we already had really messed us up. We still aren't close to digging out of the response time and other issues created years ago.