Buffing Calls @ Private NYC Ambulances

Remi said:
Yes, sitting around and waiting is exactly what one does between calls.

Or you could inspect and clean your rig and equipment, train, study, work out, watch movies. Stuff normal EMS professionals do between calls.
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Woah there tiger, slow it down a bit. Do you not understand? He is not a normal EMS professional, he is a volunteer! Do you not understand the special, one might even say mystical, status that attaches to the individual? Volunteers are freely giving their time because of the king-size heart they have to save the world; why should they concern themselves with doing things that mere "normal" EMS folks do? The nerve of some people... :D
 
DesertMedic66 said:
Not so much for urban cities especially a busy city like NYC where there is a hospital and an ambulance on every street corner.
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New York City does NOT have an ambulance and ambulance on every street corner. Manhattan might, but parts of Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx definitely don't. Staten Island, the smallest borough with an urban area of about 50 sq miles, and a population of about 475,000, only has two hospitals.

For parts of Brooklyn & Queens, the volunteer ambulance or fire department can make it to the scene before the 911 system units, especially back in the day, when NYC EMS had 20-45 minute ETA to most calls.
 
This opens up a huge public safety risk ... now we have multiple ambulances running lights and sirens through the city unnecessarily. I don't care how good of a driver you think you are, the second you flip on the lights and sirens, you double your chances of being involved in a fatal motor vehicle collision.

Not to mention personal liability. A lawyer would have a field day if you were ever involved in a crash.
Lawyer: So Volunteer Bufferson, when you were driving Code 3 down the streets of New York, FDNY asked you to respond to this call and dispatched you?
Buffer: No, I was trying to beat the FDNY ambulance.
Lawyer: Putting the public at risk to try and beat the paid professional EMTs and Paramedics who were dispatched to the call?
Buffer: No its fine, we do this all the time.
Lawyer: How do you find out about these calls?
Buff: Oh I listen to a police radio for calls that sound like they might need an ambulance.
Lawyer: So nobody has asked you to come and you don't even know if an ambulance is required or the nature of the call and you're putting to public at risk by driving a half ton bomb through red lights?
Buff: But the paid guys are used to it.

I hope you either have good insurance or like the idea of someone else living in your house.
 
I can understand your concern and i appreciate your enlightening me with the associated risks, but when all other vollys in NYC do it, and the results are highly rewarding, you keep on doing what works.

High risk = high reward.
 
Sounds all very Mother Jugs and Speed.
 
When you're done with your shift driving home, and you get t-boned by an over eager EMT attempting to buff a call he's not assigned to, and he races through your intersection without stopping to clear it because he really really wants to beat FDNY to that call, is it still high risk high reward for you then?
 
Yall can go on all day about the risks and how vollys shouldn't buff but that won't change how we operate. The main problem I see is why all vollies aren't called upon by FDNY 911 more often. That would put less strain on the regular 911 units and increase response times.
 
adamNYC said:
Yall can go on all day about the risks and how vollys shouldn't buff but that won't change how we operate. The main problem I see is why all vollies aren't called upon by FDNY 911 more often. That would put less strain on the regular 911 units and increase response times.
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Hopefully one of you asinine vollys killing someone isn't what it takes to change your broken system. As for why you're not getting support, it's because no other place is dumb enough to have any kind of system like that.
 
adamNYC said:
Yall can go on all day about the risks and how vollys shouldn't buff but that won't change how we operate. The main problem I see is why all vollies aren't called upon by FDNY 911 more often. That would put less strain on the regular 911 units and increase response times.
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The answer to that question can easily be answered by pretty much all of the posts you have done so far.
 
adamNYC said:
High risk = high reward.
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This is why you shouldn't be allowed near a patient, much less a several ton killing machine.

TransportJockey said:
Hopefully one of you asinine vollys killing someone isn't what it takes to change your broken system.
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It's happened, nothing changes since the vollies are sacred cows.
 
adamNYC said:
Yall can go on all day about the risks and how vollys shouldn't buff but that won't change how we operate. The main problem I see is why all vollies aren't called upon by FDNY 911 more often. That would put less strain on the regular 911 units and increase response times.
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Probably because based on this thread, it does not seem likely that FDNY would place all that much trust into any of these organizations. I have neither the time nor inclination to look it up, but I am betting it's illegal for you to be driving around with lights and sirens having not been dispatched to a call. That right there is enough of a red flag regarding your judgement.
 
adamNYC said:
This coming from a guy with a NY State Buff patch :)

If you read my post or my signature, you would know that I do volunteer.

If you have ever worked a private, you would know that we do collect insurance information. Of course there will be the homeless or those without insurance.
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I mentioned it in your other thread, but this is why your volly wants you to buff. They cannot obtain their own contract (probably due to poor performance) so they need you to steal calls so they can collect money.

It's a scam.
 
DesertMedic66 said:
TransportJockey summed up what I was going to say. Volunteer companies are great for rural areas where there are literally no calls and the closest established EMS system is hours away. Not so much for urban cities especially a busy city like NYC where there is a hospital and an ambulance on every street corner.

Also I had the chance to talk to several Hatzolah volunteers during hurricane Sandy. Let's just say our view points were very different on most topics and they were also a little mad that we were unable to let them use our fuel trucks when the city ran out of gas.

The point of most volunteer companies is to allow the volunteers to have a career and family and then occasionally do a station shift or go on calls. If you are that busy of a volunteer company you need to be an actual company.
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In the NYC 911 system the vollies are listening to the dispatch, and then trying to beat the dispatched 911 unit to the job. If you are trying to compete for a quicker response time with a unit that is a reasonable distance away (typically just a few minutes), you are dead wrong, and are also irrelevant to operations in general. The need for a response to a call has been fulfilled by city, so there is no real need to "pick up the slack." I remember when Ed (Dispatcher #869 IIRC) would give the Glen Oaks squad (GOVAC) the jump on a call before he dispatched it out.
 
The idea of listening to a scanner and jumping calls is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard of in my entire life. Sorry to be blunt. Culture, history, or whatever, that's absolutely ridiculous.

Wait it out two more months then start applying to jobs where you can do 911s without this whole ridiculous setup.
 
Some volleys dont collect insurance info
 
adamNYC said:
Some volleys dont collect insurance info
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If the volly company steals just one billable txp per day from the career department, where the txp = $500, the volly company is stealing $182,500 of revenue from its rightful recipient. That's a new ambulance, or the yearly salary for a few employees.
 
We would sometimes get screwed when the vollies would beat us to the scene (we were ALS), get the patient into the back of their bus real quick. What this meant was that we did ALS interventions and txp on the volly bus, but we couldn't bill.
 
Another issue I have with vollies trying to buff jobs is that it puts an extra (not needed) ambulance on the road, running L&S, with all of the risks to the public involved.
 
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