The public would be shocked if they knew...

[MMiz]

I know the public is consistently shocked when they find out their insurance doesn't cover their non-emergent ambulance ride.

Why was I charged $1000 for a three mile ride to the hospital!? It was an emergency!

 

[terrible one]

How less than 10% of our calls actually require an ambulance.

 

[NomadicMedic]

... How obsessed we are with boots, jump bags and stethoscopes.

 

[EpiEMS]

Limited education of personnel
Limited evidence base for interventions
Slow adoption of evidence/evidence based practices
Lack of autonomy among providers
Lack of true national standardization
Limited physician oversight/involvement
Low pay, poor working conditions
inability to refuse to transport or provide a better alternative

Oh, and that many services are not truly public services.

 

[shelvpower]

The public would be shocked if they knew what nasty sense of humour we have to help us cope with those bad calls

 

[twistedMP]

The public would be shocked if they knew what nasty sense of humour we have to help us cope with those bad calls

Yup if they were a fly on the wall in the truck or station they would be opening up their wallets on the spot for a shrink

 

[shelvpower]

Yup if they were a fly on the wall in the truck or station they would be opening up their wallets on the spot for a shrink

Yup if they were a fly on the wall in the truck or station they would be opening up their wallets on the spot for a shrink

Poor shrink...

 

[DieselBolus]

The results of scraping any surface on a rig and culturing it. I feel like several of the above comments could be applied to healthcare in general.

 

[EpiEMS]

I believe I've seen something like that recently...gotta take a look.

The results of scraping any surface on a rig and culturing it. I feel like several of the above comments could be applied to healthcare in general.

 

[DieselBolus]

I believe I've seen something like that recently...gotta take a look.

Someone scraped the mic button in the back of a rig and ended up with some scary stuff. I assume youre thinking of the same thing, post it up if you find it.

Fwiw, my mic survived a dunking in Cavicide.

 

[COmedic17]

I feel like if ten random ambulances had hidden voice recorders in the cab just to pick up partners conversations, it would make a fairly entertaining tv show.

 

[DesertMedic66]

One of our medics did a study on the conversations that go on in the front of the ambulance. Some crews volunteered to carry around voice recorders.

 

[RedAirplane]

When I moved to California, I was shocked to learn that ambulances cost money.

My hometown in Maryland charges $45 for ALS 911 with a faster response than most places in California... You hear the sirens next door before you even finish stating the nature of your emergency. The response window is 3-5 minutes in much more sparse an area than California cities that have 8-12 minute windows.

Plus, many of the squads opted out of state/county funding because they didn't want to charge a penny, whereas receiving state money would require charging at least $45 per transport.

 

[Ewok Jerky]

The results of scraping any surface on a rig and culturing it. I feel like several of the above comments could be applied to healthcare in general.

And not just in the patient compartment.

This is all I could find and its not full text: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22440671