What does the judgment of a paramedic unit that hasn't seen the patient add to your own decision-making? This is like asking dispatch if you should board somebody.
Is this a common practice in your area?
Where I work now we're 100% ALS unless the volunteers put a BLS unit in-service. But, I'll reference my previous experience in the NYC 911 system:
As BLS, I always operated from the mindset that no one is coming to help, that we are to assess, treat, then load and go. That's was our default. When we were packaged and ready to get out of the house, we would radio the medics, give a very brief report, and tell them that we're ready to leave unless they want us to stay. With calls that start out as BLS, we were required to request ALS under certain conditions. Fairly often, the pt really didn't need immediate ALS, so we would assess, quickly package,request ALS per protocol after that, then advise that we're going to txp two minutes later so that they can be cancelled and not have to waste their time.
If the pt was truly sick, I would just stay on-scene and not give the medics the option of cancelling themselves. Otherwise, the culture in that system was that if ALS was assigned to the call, it's their decision if BLS transports before ALS arrival. Typically, the medics would ask for a report a minute or two out and then advise to package and txp or to wait for them based on the BLS assessment.
If a call was typically given to only one ALS unit, if ALS had an ETA greater than ten minutes, BLS was automatically assigned. A good BLS unit could get demographics, a quick Hx, package, and be out the door in less than ten mins, and at the hospital 3-5 mins later, which is about the same amount of time it would have taken ALS to show up, grab their equipment, get in the house, do their own assessment and be preparing for ALS interventions.
Edit: We run mutual aid into a neighboring county that may send a BLS bus. We're typically only a minute or two behind them, so there's no transport decision to be made while we're en-route.
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