Weren't we just talking about this? "Delayed ambo respo

[Amhet1]

Jack, thanks for the comments of the new and improved Danver Paramedics. My concern tho, is that it has been 4 years and problems are coming to light, or never changed.

My other concern is the language you've used to state your defense of DH.....

Paramedics at DG were FORCED to:

Double load patients from 2 different calls Never FORCED to do so. In some cases it has been allowed to happen

The standard of care is to provide 1 run, 1 delivery to an ER. How, at ANY time, can you justify going from one call to another with a patient already loaded. It makes sense for a taxi to do so to save time and costs, but an ambulance is NOT a taxi.

Administer sublingual Narcan and walk away from Overdose patients Never forced, nor allowed to happen. Lie!

ColoadoEMS was there during the Gravitz administration. He may have seen it first-hand, so if you can prove that it has NEVER happened, how could it be a lie?

Drive like a madman to make unrealistic response times Never forced anyone to drive a certain style, for any reason.

This one is a bit more obvious, but lets review a few facts first. 22 ambulances, 150 sq miles. That equates to 6.81 sq miles to cover by each unit IF fully staffed and available. Now being generous, if DH has an average UHU of .65, 14.3 units are busy at any one time, that leaves 7.7 units available to cover 150 sq miles or an average of 19.48 sq miles each. If the unit is located in the center of that 19.48 sw miles, it will take AT LEAST 10.55 minutes.....So, there is a good chance that unit from Downtown could be sent to DIA. How do they get there in "8:59" without driving like a bat out of hell? Im sure your staff is not "forced" to drive in any certain style, but when a contract says you WILL be on scene within a specific time period and you only have a certain number of units, something has to give, and the easiest is safety through poor driving techniques.

Dump patients at the ED without proper handoff reports "proper" as defined by whom? FORCED, NOT!

OK, back to Basic school.... a "proper" report is a face-to-face verbal report of patient status, care and treatment, and situation surrounding the illness or injury. This is typically followed by a complete and accurate written report. For the more important part of the statement tho... Your crews have never got the patient out of the back of the unit and getting toned for your next call? Do you have the pleasure of a detailed verbal report, cup of coffee while completing the written report, clean the unit, remake the gurney, then advise dispatch you're available to respond to the next call? Typically not. You get them in, on the ER bed, quick verbal, and back out the door. Short answer is Too many calls and not enough units = FORCED to dump pts quickly!

Handle ALL the EMS calls with 7,8,9 buses on in the city There haven't been this few buses on the schedule for almost 10 years!

I have run your numbers. There is no way mathmatically or any other way that you can provide the proper level of coverage even if you have all 22 units on the road 24/7. 20 years ago, 20 units running double paramedics worked fine, but that was 50 sq miles and a few hundred thousand peopel fewer.

Refuse care and transport to patients due to overload No one has ever been denied care or transport for this reason, let alone forcing employees to behave in this manner.

This comes back to my previous statements. Basic school taught us that things like negligence and abandonment are bad. With 22 units, you WILL be overloaded at least 75% of the time. Personally, I am even against encouraging a pateint to refuse, unless you can justify it in court.

Obviously, there is only so much that can be done to improve things at DH. Until there are fundemental changes in the system, your crews will continue to run their [s:34ad5a2e98]asses[/s:34ad5a2e98] butts off, have unacceptable response times (when tracked CORRECTLY), and being on a sinking ship. For AT LEAST the last four years if not significantly longer, your crews have bailing water from the ship but its becoming obvious that they cant keep up. Do I REALLY need to say anything about how that MIGHT effect morale?

It is unfortunate that Mr Nugent has allowed the system to fail. It has failed his crews, DH, and the people of the city and county of Denver. I really wonder if anyone has actually explained things like quality improvement, or processes, or how to even how to look at the numbers and figure out, surprisingly, that he doesnt have enough GD AMBULANCES? It is PAINFULLY obvious that the system is broken and perfume wont make the pig smell better. You have enough mutual aid that there should NEVER be a 25 minute wait for an ambulance to come available.

Jack, I love your passion and support of DH, and I understand that your comments are from your heart. The recommendation of the Council President to send in an independent consultant is not a bad idea. The hardest thing to do sometimes is to see the problems from the inside. I would love to talk with you more about this. It would be great to discuss your numbers and see if my numbers are in the ballpark.

PS: Sorry about all the cliches :roll:

[p3medic]

It would seem the City should invest in more ambulances and staff for DH, not rely on a mix of private mutual aid response.

[Eydawn]

All right. I'm going to have to try to get some better numbers that include the private response as well as the Denver Health responses, because none of us are operating with the full picture here at the moment. I know for a fact that I've responded to DIA from Commerce City with one of the privates, and that's when I was a gopher/observer about... 4 years ago. So DIA is not up shite creek as far as I can tell/remember for EMS coverage. They're a ways out of Denver itself, for those of you who don't know the area...

Let's figure out the real picture from all of the angles before we go further with this.

Wendy

CO EMT-B