Funny calls

[emtdennis]

Looks rough out there now, wait til ObamaCare comes to a community near you!

JMHO!!

[Richard B the EMT]

Socialized medicine isn't all it is cracked up to be.

It isn't Socialized Medicine.

Back before I started in the EMS system in 1974, if a NYC region hospital crew felt they, or at least the ER, were too crowded, they'd contact the area ambulance services, both 9-1-1 and IFT, and say, "We're closed" to any incoming patients. Sometimes, the first warning an ambulance crew got, was the security "cop" meeting them at the ER door to tell them.

Sometime between 1980 and 1985, a Midwood (Brooklytn, NY) Ambulance Service attempted to bring a cardiac nature patient to Kings Highway Hospital (Brooklyn, NY). Back then, you'd back up a long alley/driveway, offload, open a security phone box to be buzzed in, wait for the elevator to get to the entryway level (half the streacher still outside), and if the elevator actually went to the first floort the first time, then proceed down the hallway to the ER. The Midwood team was met at the ER door by a security officer, who told them "We're closed". They reversed direction, returned to the ambulance with the patient, and started towards the Kings County (municipal) Hospital (Brooklyn, NY). Somewhere along the way, the patient arrested, and was pronounced at KCH.

The patient, or the patient's family, apparently were politically well connected with NY State Senator Hevesey. He enacted legislation, later made law, that any patient presented at an ER must be seen, if only to determine them stable enough to be transported to the next nearest facility, with a filled out form indicating that stability.

I entered municipal EMS in 1985. Shortly therafter, within NYC, anyway, the EMS 9-1-1 center was using a different protocol, apparently allowed under state law, where all the 9-1-1 "recieving hospitals" in the city were divided up into "pods". If the facility didn't have the setup for specific medical conditions, such as PEDs (pediactrics), EDP, or other specific categories, they were declared "Permanently On Diversion" to that category. If due to temporary conditions of overcrowding within other specific categories, or running out of specialized equipment (EKG machines, CT scanner backlog), EMS Command could grant them a few hours of category specific diversion, or if just too many patients, a "Total" diversion would be allowed.

However, if more than half of the hospitals within a "pod" went onto a category diversion, or too close to one pod from another pod, all the hospitals within the pod would be "reopened" to take any patients that they would have recieved anyway, called "Catchment". The obvious problem (which continues to this day) became ambulance teams being stuck at the ERs, awaiting exam room bed assignments. Field supervisors make a lot of visits to ERs to verify crowding or other conditions causing the backlogs, so they can try to free up the teams to bring another paient to the same ER. Crazy, but somehow, the system seems to work, at least most of the time.

(Unlike other areas of the country, NYC ambulance crews rarely call the destination ER to "present" the patient. Most times, dispatch calls in "Notifications" for patients viewed by the crews as critical or in extremis. ER crews would look up, and see me and my partner from FDNY EMS 47Adam3 coning through the door with a patient, unless we'd requested the "Note" to them.)

[DFIB]

It isn't Socialized Medicine.

I see your example is an different situation entirely.

The situation i was referring to occurred in a state run socialized medical environment.