holding the wall

Joe

Joe

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Don't know how common of a term it is but as I sit here with a pt I think...how does everyone else get in and out of the hospital in a timely manner? Maybe its just the abuse of the system or maybe this hospital is really slow. We've been waiting for a bed for the last 2 hours and 12 mins. What's the longest wait for you guys?
 
We have 3 hospitals in my response area. The longest I have been on "bed delay" or "holding the wall" is 30 mins. And that was only one time. Normally we walk in tell the charge nurse which patient this is so they can match up the call in we did with the patient and then give us a bed. Then we hand over patient identifiers to registration.

Normally we walk in and say "chest pain" and the charge nurse will say "bed N" as we are still entering the ER.
 
That must ne nice. Were still holding and our pt is chest pain. Nsr on the monitor so I don't think they care that much :/
 
Well chest pain can mean a lot of different things ;)

It happens to us pretty regularly but never for that long, 30 minutes is the longest I ever waited, and I ended up giving 2 mg of narcan. My partner finally put his foot down and told the charge nurse to give us a room or we were transporting to another facility. Needless to say we got a room and a very grumpy ER doc. Not grumpy with us, grumpy with the nurse for making us wait with a PT we had to continually give meds to.

If more than 2 units are status 99 (holding the wall) our dispatch center puts that hospital on bypass and that's bad news for the hospital so they do everything in their power to keep it from happening.

I've heard stories of units in the past being stuck for an hour or more.
 
Yea were in one of 2 hospitals in the area. This is the most appropriate facility. Were still holding with no end in sight
 
Well you are in LA county...
 
6 hours but im sure some poor soul on this forum has done more hahaha
 
Wow 6 hrs is crazy! We finally cleared at 0150. 10 mins prior to eos. Funny thing...people that came in after us cleared first and returned with pt and cleared again...
 
It really depends on the hospital. There's one hospital in the OC/Long Beach area where a "long wait" is 10 minutes. There's another hospital where a short wait is over an hour. There are some hospitals where it depends on how busy they are and sometimes it's fast, and sometimes it's slow. I guess you could buff your chart, but that doesn't help anyone in the end.
 
We call that "parking" a patient around here.

CMS statement regarding "parking" and in consideration of EMTALA - "hospitals have an obligation to assess the patient's condition once they "present" at a hospital's dedicated emergency department."

CMS states that it "recognize(s) the enormous strain and crowding many hospital emergency departments face...however, this practice ["parking"] is not a solution. 'Parking' patients in hospitals and refusing to release EMS equipment or personnel jeopardizes patient health and impacts the ability of the EMS personnel to provide emergency services to the rest of the community."

Of course, we (EMS providers) should act reasonably and/or wait a reasonable amount of time given circumstances - "remember we're on the same team ultimately". I've only had to wait over 10 minutes once and that was due to the arrival of two codes simultaneously.
 
4 and a half hours. But this was at our trauma center with an abnormal labs while they had multiple trauma alerts, one medical code and a few medical reds and yellows come in prior to us getting a bed.

Record for my service is 5 hours.
 
The longest I've had to wait is like 10 minutes.

Joe said:
That must ne nice. Were still holding and our pt is chest pain. Nsr on the monitor so I don't think they care that much :/
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If you guys were still holding your patient, why are you on the internet posting?
 
For anyone who knows Hollywood Community Hospital... Longest time there was 1hr 45 mins..... Along with 5 other crews
 
Never more than 5 minutes. 99 times out of 100 it's straight to the room. We also have something like 18 hospitals to choose from in our city.

Now waiting to give report after the patient is in bed... Sometimes that can approach 10min...
 
DV_EMT said:
For anyone who knows Hollywood Community Hospital... Longest time there was 1hr 45 mins..... Along with 5 other crews
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Ever been to Presbyterian Intercommunity Hospital (PIH) in Whittier? 3 hours.
 
fast65 said:
The longest I've had to wait is like 10 minutes.



If you guys were still holding your patient, why are you on the internet posting?
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We take water breaks and figured I would start something to keep me entertained on future water trips. Some crews will sit behind the gurney and play games out if sight but that's there thing.
 
fast65 said:
The longest I've had to wait is like 10 minutes.



If you guys were still holding your patient, why are you on the internet posting?
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If the patients stable they don't need to be staring at them non stop.

I've emtlifed while with a patient holding or on long distance calls. Gets boring after awhile. Nothing wrong with it.
 
Sasha said:
If the patients stable they don't need to be staring at them non stop.

I've emtlifed while with a patient holding or on long distance calls. Gets boring after awhile. Nothing wrong with it.
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Yep, me too. If I am all done with my work and we aren't to the hospital yet, whatever. I have no idea how I survived so many long out of towns back before cell phones were so ubiquitous.
 
As long as you aren't doing it in front of your patient who cares?
 
NVRob said:
As long as you aren't doing it in front of your patient who cares?
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Exactly, nothing wrong with sitting behind the patient or switching off the babysitting duties with your partner.

At the major hospitals in Boston the only wait is for the triage nurse, and that's rarely longer than 10-15 minutes if it's busy. Other hospitals require a call in which usually means the bed is assigned before I get there.
 
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