Couple blame ambulance 'policy' for treatment delay

MariaCatEMT

MariaCatEMT

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Couple blame ambulance "policy" for treatment delay

Joshua Errett, The Ottawa Citizen

Published: Tuesday, March 14, 2006

When Eleanor Crawley suffered a heart attack in early January, she asked -- and expected -- paramedics to take her directly to the Ottawa Hospital's Civic campus, where staff were familiar with her condition.

But that's not quite what happened. The 58-year-old says she waited for 25 minutes for the ambulance to arrive. Then, she was loaded inside only to be driven to a nearby street corner where, she says, she was transferred to another ambulance, which took her to the Queensway-Carleton Hospital. Only staff at the Queensway-Carleton decided she'd be better served at another hospital. Another ambulance was called and, finally, Ms. Crawley made it to the heart institute, which is at the Civic campus.

Now, two months and several complaints later to the ambulance service and their city councillor, Ms. Crawley and her husband, Steve Wheeler, are still wondering why their wishes were ignored. They say the next time they have go to hospital, they'll drive themselves.


Read more here...
 
"According to the doctors at the (Civic campus), a lot of damage was caused by delays in treatment," said Mr. Wheeler.
Click to expand...

sounds like they met with ALS, transferred to the ALS rig, and then went to the closest ED.

Questions: - What did the EKG show initially? - they didn't seem to think it was a cardiac issue.

Why was response delayed?
 
It's not a scenario... I doubt they are going to share the EKG results. The problem is, someone has beef with the ambulance. They have the same policy we have here, never bypass a facility with a class 1 or class 2 Medical/Trauma Patient. I'd be skinned by my director if I skipped the closest hospital with a heart attack victim.

So they call 911 at 12:21... How far, by road, were they from the nearest Ambulance post?

Time to take info & dispatch.. give it 6 minutes. Time to get in the rig and get out the door, give it another minute. Time to commute to the scene.. The rest of the time, given traffic and road conditions.

I called in a brush fire across from our house last week. After I hung up, I had time to get my personal indian tank :P , fill it, walk down the drive way, across rte. 6, and douse some of the fire before the fire whistle even started to blow... So I always figure some of the time gets lost in dispatch.

I've said it before...
You can't post an ambulance in every tax payers drive way...
 
It's all about where you live. 25 minutes is a rural response time where I'm at. Most of the area is in an 8 minute response zone, and you will have fire onscene usually before the ambulance. That's why I choose to live in an 8 minute response zone. An ALS fire station is approximately 1/2 mile away from my house. Shoot times around here run at a max of 2 minutes, since units are dispatched right when a call is answered (first thing they ask is where they are and send appropriate units).

I've never worked in a system where you may have to transfer a pt from ambulance to ambulance, so I don't know what that's like. So long as the crews in this story followed their protocols and weren't negligent (which is a hard thing to prove), they should be fine.
 
Around here, the county aims for 90 seconds or less for chute time. That is, phone anwered to call dispatched.

Jon
 
As usual I bet there is more to the story. I have only transferred a pt twice in my career. As a rural EMT with a first responder we met a CCT unit and transferred the pt to them. The second time our rig "had issues" and we had to transfer to one that did not...
 
I've transferred patients to other ambulances...

Good reasons:


No heat
No AC
No Oxygen



No gas....
 
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