Is your public EMS service providing interfacility transports?

MMiz

MMiz

I put the M in EMTLife
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I was surprised to see how many interfacility transports my county service provides.

There doesn't appear to be a shortage of private companies serving the area.

I'm shocked. Is this the norm for public/third service agencies?
 
MMiz said:
I was surprised to see how many interfacility transports my county service provides.

There doesn't appear to be a shortage of private companies serving the area.

I'm shocked. Is this the norm for public/third service agencies?
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Any breakdown of how many are turfed to 911 because they have no IFT units available or something along those lines?
 
EpiEMS said:
Any breakdown of how many are turfed to 911 because they have no IFT units available or something along those lines?
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No idea, I’m just looking at PulsePoint.

I know that FEMA is providing the county units to help with the shortage of units.

I’m surprised that all of the IFT aren’t being diverted to privates. I thought that was the national norm.
 
I know when I snoop LA on Pulse Point I see them list IFTs, which at first caught me by surprise, cuz LAFD doesn't really do that. Then I spotted one mapped at a SNF I been to a time or dozen back when I was working private ambulance, took another look, and it seems like whenever they get any EMS call out of a nursing home they automatically characterize it as an IFT.

Our third service County EMS does the occasional hospital to hospital Priority 1 transfer for things like trauma or Cath Lab upgrades, but usually only when AMR has some long ETA or whatever (they're the only private here, so EMS is their only backup when not available for emergent transfers).

Otherwise we get the same normal 911 calls out of SNFs as everyone else.
 
Jim37F said:
I know when I snoop LA on Pulse Point I see them list IFTs, which at first caught me by surprise, cuz LAFD doesn't really do that. Then I spotted one mapped at a SNF I been to a time or dozen back when I was working private ambulance, took another look, and it seems like whenever they get any EMS call out of a nursing home they automatically characterize it as an IFT.

Our third service County EMS does the occasional hospital to hospital Priority 1 transfer for things like trauma or Cath Lab upgrades, but usually only when AMR has some long ETA or whatever (they're the only private here, so EMS is their only backup when not available for emergent transfers).

Otherwise we get the same normal 911 calls out of SNFs as everyone else.
Click to expand...
 
The priority medical dispatch card set has card 33 as”interfacility”. If the CAD uses ProQA, the dispatch determinant matches the card. So, any call that was imitated by a facility will be a 33, unless its overridden by a dispatcher.
 
MMiz said:
I was surprised to see how many interfacility transports my county service provides.

There doesn't appear to be a shortage of private companies serving the area.

I'm shocked. Is this the norm for public/third service agencies?
Click to expand...
I believe you are misinterpreting what you are seeing... Some agencies (including the EMS agency in the county I live in) call any 911 call to another facility a "transfer" because you are picking up from one facility that has healthcare personnel on staff to another (exactly as @NomadicMedic explains). This includes doctors offices, dialysis centers, clinics, SNFs, etc. They are still 911 calls, but they don't get a FD first responder in 99% of cases (cardiac arrests being the exception), because they have another healthcare provider treating them, and are coded by dispatch as an IFT.

So it's not an IFT in the traditional sense (scheduled runs, from residence to dialysis, etc), but simply a 911 call that originated from a location that has medical staff on site.
 
Of course, that makes sense, thanks!
 
They used to... and it was huge money for them... but they didn't enjoy it so they quit, gave up the revenue, and want a huge mill levy increase to make up for the shortfall while a private rakes it in. Disgusting.
 
To clarify this a little bit, a sick person would normally be a 26 Bravo however a sick person that is in a nursing home will get dispatched as a 33 Alpha or Bravo, or if it’s ALS, 33 Charlie.

Critical calls, such as a cardiac arrest, will always be a 9 echo.

ProQA has a question in the 33 card that is almost always an automatic upgrade to ALS. “Has this person been evaluated by a medical professional?” If the person at the nursing home says yes, its ALS. I can’t tell you how many 33 Charlie calls I went on that were altered lab values or a patient who needs to be evaluated in the emergency department for a cath change.
 
NUMBERS AND LETTERS!

Plain language please? ;)
 
ffemt8978 said:
And we went away from 10 codes because they were too complicated. :s
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In most cases, dispatch centers won’t use these codes on the radio with the responding unit. They would normally say something like “Medic 5, respond to a cardiac arrest” However, some places use the priority medical dispatch coding in their CAD notes, Or at least use the alpha- echo coding for response. It’s a MEMSIS 3.x field used in determining how the car was dispatched, and if you’ve ever taken the EMD class, they become second nature. :)
 
NomadicMedic said:
In most cases, dispatch centers won’t use these codes on the radio with the responding unit. They would normally say something like “Medic 5, respond to a cardiac arrest” However, some places use the priority medical dispatch coding in their CAD notes, Or at least use the alpha- echo coding for response. It’s a MEMSIS 3.x field used in determining how the car was dispatched, and if you’ve ever taken the EMD class, they become second nature. :)
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Having been a 911 dispatcher, I'm well aware of that.
 
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