Paid vs Volley or Volley vs Patient?

[uglyEMT]

I will attest THAT is a crappy system!

Ok burn the whole thing down, pick up the ashes, and scatter away. Then bring in the paid serviecs and make it work as a normal system. A system that entrenched that the actual County Medical Director was run off and the interm told to sit in the corner After reading the blog I was just assuming it was a duty crew slash protocol issue. I didnt realize it was a freaking school yard clique regime.

ERDoc I don't know what to say but I will say if any place needed a paid service it is that place. Remind me never to get sick up there or if I do at least I hope to be AO enough to turn on my blue lights so my wife can get me to the hospital in time

[ERDoc]

No ugly, you have it all wrong. It's GREEN lights for volley EMS members. The volley system is very smart. They are a large voting population and have made good friends with most politicians. Those politicians know it would be political suicide to rock the boat. There are some VACs that have 5-6 ambulances and at times can get a crew to staff 1 of them. Then there is the duplication of services. In the area I vollied in, there were 3 VACs, with about 10 ambulances between them at the time. The most I can ever remember on calls at one time was 3 or 4. Combine those depts and cut back on the number of ambulances and you could save a bit of money. I will give props to the VAC I was with. We were always able to get the needed crews together on every call, even the BS calls. We were one of the few companies that didn't have a manpower issue. A large portion of our calls came from responding to our neigboring depts who couldn't get crews together. We never gave a way a call due to lack of manpower, only due to lack of ambulances. In our case it worked, but since we could respond from anywhere it still took up to 7 minutes to get an ambulance on the road.

[Richard B the EMT]

In NY State, it's blue lights for VFD, green for VAC/VAS on personal cars.

[uglyEMT]

Ah OK NJ is Blue for VAC and VFD didnt know NY was Green. I guess thats why NYers never yield right of way to me LOL Time to get a green light LOL

ERDoc thanks for the extra info on the area. I guess once you throw the politics into the mix then its a no win situation. Still think with all that apperatus it would go better. I understand with the travel times the response time gets stretched out, we have the same thing here sometimes. Usually if we know the member is coming from a distance and we have someone on the rig already we roll and just notify the late commer to meet on scene. This of course depends on the call severity.

Tough case to crack, seems as though no matter what the patient is suffering in that area. So much for do no harm.

[Just Plain Ruff]

Any chance that a patient who sues the department has a chance in hell of winning. Is there a way that they can show that EMS response gets a consistently slower and lesser response than the generic car fire or house fire?

[Richard B the EMT]

Ah OK NJ is Blue for VAC and VFD didnt know NY was Green. I guess thats why NYers never yield right of way to me LOL Time to get a green light LOL

Don't get a new lens for your light. Unfortunately, many in NY State don't yield to Law Enforcement, Fire Service, or EMS vehicles under RED beacons, strobes and blinkers. In addition, they're supposed to pull off to the right, but I've had some drivers pull to the wrong, left side of the double yellow line to let me through, but they do it when I'm already on the same wrong side of the lines.

[ERDoc]

Any chance that a patient who sues the department has a chance in hell of winning. Is there a way that they can show that EMS response gets a consistently slower and lesser response than the generic car fire or house fire?

I doubt it. They are sacred cows, not to mention they ride the "hero" coattails of FDNY. The problem is well known but not talked about, which is why this blog made such a huge ruckus and then had to be shut down.

Edited June 27, 2013 by ERDoc

[triemal04]

I doubt it. They are sacred cows, not to mention they ride the "hero" coattails of FDNY. The problem is well known but not talked about, which is why this blog made such a huge ruckus and then had to be shut down.

I don't know. I don't know the exact politics and public perceptions in your area, and while I can definetly see how you could be right, it would be very interesting to see what would happen if someone filed a lawsuit that actually went to court for something like that.

It would be best to have a savvy lawyer, or be willing to do the legwork on your own (and know what to be looking for), but I think that once you were able to pull dispatch records (which would be public information) you could make a case for a suit.

My guess it that the suit would fail, but what would happen in the court of public opinion would be interesting to see. IF you had the right info, IF you had the right lawyer, and IF you had the media willing to be unbiased to either side (big IF there) you could at least...maybe...get people aware of a huge problem...

[Richard B the EMT]

...Or be silenced by an out of court payout, with non disclosure agreement.

[tniuqs]

OMFG .. if rob were alive I just can imagine what he would say on this topic .

Yes that is correct 'I" am still alive despite the rumours of my demise.

ps quoting that Shakespeare guy