Duty to act or no?

[Christopher.Collins]

*For somewhat obvious purposes I am excluding town and agency names due to subject matter of this post. Ill try not to confuse you.

So Im sitting here thinking of when I worked for a commercial company in the area about a year ago. We provided 911 ALS/BLS service to the city we were based in as well as mutual aid, medic intercept and non-emergent services to the surrounding area communities. One city's EMS agency and fire department DO NOT respond to psych calls, and rather than dump it on another nearby town they call us... mind you we are about 20 minutes out.

I understand that they dont want to go to a "bull sh*t" call and put an ambulance out of service for a couple of hours, including on scene time and travel time (closest hospitals is abot about 20 minutes away). But who are they to determine what calls they take? Can they legally do this? Dose anyone remember that psych calls can be emergencies too? That they can be life threatening? That it may not even be true psych? Sure, dispatch has advanced alot these days but that dosnt mean they per say are getting all the fatcs.

Just curious. Ive always wondered if theres a legality issue there... and I only ever get blank stares when I ask my peers.

[dahlio]

There are many factors to whether it's legal or not in this situation. That city might be contracting a company to come and do psych calls, just as many nursing homes have transport companies run BLS jobs for them. If this isn't the case, then it's really the cities responsibility to determine what they will do for the company dropping calls.

Are they setting themselves up for a lawsuit with this one? Quite possibly, when it could be argued that the unit who was closer did not respond, and affected patient care due to prolonged response times. I'm not sure whether this department who drops calls is a volunteer driven department, or rather a company, but neither is acceptable. Unfortunately, psych and "BS" calls are part of EMS, and call picking can't be a part of it.

[moonshinedoc]

This has been a big debate in our area. Our rivals seem to pick which calls and what they think is not a call that they should go on, it has been pretty evident. As for our service we take the call no matter what.

[Just Plain Ruff]

This has been a big debate in our area. Our rivals seem to pick which calls and what they think is not a call that they should go on, it has been pretty evident. As for our service we take the call no matter what.

Then you petition the state to take over that pick and choose services area.

If you can prove that patietns are suffering and your service can provider better coverage then you might just be able to take over their service area. But's that's a last resort step.