Government agencies with IFT and wheelchair service?

EMDispatch

EMDispatch

IAED EMD-Q/EMT
Messages
395
Reaction score
33
Points
28
I'm just curious if I can
get a list or links to government, not private EMS services, that provide IFT and even wheelchair services if possible.
 
Quite a few FDs run IFT as well. ATC EMS, for example, does “emergency inter-facility transports”, which I did not know and pity them for. As a private, I expect that...did not expect it from them.
 
Best bet is getting on the State EMS page to get a list of services. From there it would just be going on websites and calling around. Some busier systems probably aren't going to do IFT or wheelchair. Other services may do a return home trip for residents at little or no cost.
 
We're a physically large, but small rural county, with limited funding options... so we've just kind of started toying with the idea as a possibility.
 
Pretty much every rural, tax supported ambulance service with a healthcare facility in its district in Colorado does IFTs. A few do non-medical psych transports as well but I cannot think of any that do wheelchair.
 
Tigger said:
Pretty much every rural, tax supported ambulance service with a healthcare facility in its district in Colorado does IFTs. A few do non-medical psych transports as well but I cannot think of any that do wheelchair.
Click to expand...


We wouldn't have thought about wheelchair, but we found out our local NGO mass transit provider is doing over 300 transports a week and can't even meet the demand.
 
My department is county based, and we do non-emergent and emergent transfers to and from the hospital, out of county hospitals, nursing homes, etc...

The nursing homes provide their own wheel chair service during the day, but at night or for patients who are not in a nursing home, we take wheelchair patients by ambulance (private residence, assisted living, etc...)

The only thing we DONT much of are psych transfers. We used to do them in a converted supervisor vehicle that's basically a police car with a cage in the back. However we have backed off of this practice because the majority of these transfers were happening in the wee hours of the morning and are at minimum 2 hours one way. We stopped sending them like this for crew fatigue/safety. Now we allow a neighboring EMS agency to pick them up from the ER and do it themselves.
 
EMDispatch said:
I'm just curious if I can
get a list or links to government, not private EMS services, that provide IFT and even wheelchair services if possible.
Click to expand...

Don't most? In the Kansas City area, I think the largest 5-6 FDs that also have an in-house ambulance service (KCKFD, KCFD, LSFD just to name a few) do their own transfers with some exceptions.
 
We do emergency IFT if all the privates are tied up and the doctor deems it's time sensitive..

It comes up rarely.. maybe 1 per year..
 
We (Denver Health) will do transfers from a Denver Health clinic/urgent care to the ED at Denver Health. We’ll also do emergent ED to ED transfers- typically a level 1 trauma going back to Denver Health. We only do it if we‘re going to the ED.

Most of the mountain and plains services that are county-based do IFT- Eagle County, Grand County, Logan County, etc. Summit County ambulance used to, I’m not sure if that changed when they combined into Summit Fire-EMS. I’m not aware of any that run a wheelchair service, however.
 
EMDispatch said:
We're a physically large, but small rural county, with limited funding options... so we've just kind of started toying with the idea as a possibility.
Click to expand...
I am not aware of many that do wheelchair runs..... almost none of the NJ municipal 911 agencies do IFTs, although some of the hospital based 911 systems will do them (at least handling discharges out of their affiliated hospitals),

Alamance County EMS in North Carolina does run 911s as well as IFTs, but i think they are in the minority among government run EMS systems (most barely have enough staffing to cover their routine 911 call volume).

The one thing I will caution you on is IFTs tend to be guaranteed money, while 911 is often a money loser. So are you going to be sending 911 trucks to IFT runs? Will there be a caste system, where the good providers do 911, and the not so good ones do IFT? and the not so good ones can "promote" to 911? Will both trucks have the same equipment, be held to the same training standards, etc? My former agency used to have a 911 division, and an IFT division... now they combined everything, and the closest unit gets sent, which has not helped morale at all.

If you are a government agency, you SHOULD be funded by taxes, and the level of service provided should be directly related to the amount of government funding you receive. Esp since most of the EMS billing revenue goes back to the county fund, not to the EMS agency directly. if you are looking for more funding, I don't think cutting 911 services or redistributing 911 resources is the best option.
 
Ensihoitaja said:
We (Denver Health) will do transfers from a Denver Health clinic/urgent care to the ED at Denver Health. We’ll also do emergent ED to ED transfers- typically a level 1 trauma going back to Denver Health. We only do it if we‘re going to the ED.

Most of the mountain and plains services that are county-based do IFT- Eagle County, Grand County, Logan County, etc. Summit County ambulance used to, I’m not sure if that changed when they combined into Summit Fire-EMS. I’m not aware of any that run a wheelchair service, however.
Click to expand...
To my knowledge Summit Fire EMS is still handling the transfer volume out of the hospital and ski area clinics.

@EMDispatch wheelchair can pay pretty well. My previous agency has considered hiring "non-medical" folks for this role as again, the local provider can't handle the volume and operating costs are relatively light.
 
There’s no better way to embitter your trained, dedicated paramedics than making them run wheelchair calls in a wheelchair van.
 
RocketMedic said:
There’s no better way to embitter your trained, dedicated paramedics than making them run wheelchair calls in a wheelchair van.
Click to expand...
honestly, I feel the same way about putting a paramedic on an IFT (not CCT, IFT) truck... and I know I hated working IFTs.....
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top