This is a story with video out of California, but it certainly applies EVERYwhere! It should be a National PSA. Share this on your twitters or facebooks or whatever! I get that it is the nature of our job to deal with some BS, but we can all agree that it's getting outrageous. It is a contributing factor to increasing call volume, diminished down time, personnel injury, increased response times, flat out burn out, etc. I hope this local story gains traction. I'm in Vegas, so I can tell you we have more than our fair share of BS!
Enjoy & Disperse.
http://www.news10.net/news/article/245933/2/911-system-strained-with-abusive-calls
No matter where I go, from ghetto areas of queens and Brooklyn, to the suburban Southeast, to one of the most affluent counties in the nation, the BS calls are always there.
We have our share of frequent fliers that call several times a week, or even several times a day, as the case may be. There have been several instances of patients being permanently placed into nursing homes since they shouldn't have been living alone due to lack of function, and kept wearing out 911 to help out with activity of daily living issues.
Many of our non-acute calls here are due to ignorance and laziness. People just call 911 instead of trying to solve their own (minor) problems before calling an emergency number. If I had a dollar for every patient that was stable and functional, called 911 for a minor sick-related complaint, owner a working car, and had family follow behind us in that car, I could pay my mortgage for this month.
At one time, we had a patient that worked near a hospital, which was farther away than two other facilities. The call was always for asthma, in the morning, close to the time we were supposed to get off shift. This guy would get his free treatment, and a free ride to work. He didn't stay in the ED; he just left for work. We got our regularly scheduled late job.
We need a law that it's the provider's discretion what hospital that the pt goes to. We should be able to txp to the closest appropriate facility all of the time, unless we feel like accommodating the pt. We should be able to bypass a hospital that's on diversion, even though the pt still insists on going there.