Chronic Substance Abusers

[K9kazoo]

with the chronic substances abusers? Here in Winnipeg... they are causing backlogs in the Er's, thus off load delays, long Police wait times on scene and at the local "drunk tank". Curious to see what others out there have come up with... don't want to re-invent the wheel. Our MGMT team here is only able to come up with bandage solutions.

Any input appreciated.

B.

[Dustdevil]

At the very least, they should be taken off the ambulance for the shift! :wink:

[HF-EMS]

Is this an all Canadian thread

Seriously though, are you talking management team on the State (or Province) side, or agency wide. Agency wide, you might consider having a dedicated unit on duty at the times of high frequency (Fri/sat nights) assigned for those calls. That way your main units are available to respond to actual emergencies. Govt wise, maybe the development of specialized public organizations, development of detox center, etc. I'm not sure, I know your govt-health care system is different then here. Hope the first suggestion helps.

[Asysin2leads]

Keeping our call volume up, mostly.

[Nate]

We just transport them a good ways to the Texas Medical Center and off load at the county hospital...takes them about a week to walk back to the city. :wink:

[kevkei]

We have a partnership with one of our inner city shelters. If we have a 'patient' of this type that needs to go somewhere but not necessarily a hospital, we call them and they respond to pick them up from us.

We donated one of our old units that they have converted to meet their needs by allowing them to have warm food and beverages available to serve.

Basically they have a certain response area and we have a protocol that each patient has to meet in order to be down loaded to this service. It has been utilized for about 3 years and it has worked quite well and I haven't heard of any problems stemming from it's use.

The only other choices were to either transport to hospital or to call the police and have them take them to cells or a shelter (but we would wait for hours for them in some cases).

[K9kazoo]

We have a partnership with one of our inner city shelters. If we have a 'patient' of this type that needs to go somewhere but not necessarily a hospital, we call them and they respond to pick them up from us.

We donated one of our old units that they have converted to meet their needs by allowing them to have warm food and beverages available to serve.

Basically they have a certain response area and we have a protocol that each patient has to meet in order to be down loaded to this service. It has been utilized for about 3 years and it has worked quite well and I haven't heard of any problems stemming from it's use.

The only other choices were to either transport to hospital or to call the police and have them take them to cells or a shelter (but we would wait for hours for them in some cases).

Is this Edmonton or Calgary?

[kevkei]

Is this Edmonton or Calgary?

The better of the two. :wink:

[K9kazoo]

Being from YYC... I'm alittle biased Now living in Winterpeg :?

Thanks for the PM.

[Guest]

with the chronic substances abusers? Here in Winnipeg... they are causing backlogs in the Er's, thus off load delays, long Police wait times on scene and at the local "drunk tank". Curious to see what others out there have come up with... don't want to re-invent the wheel. Our MGMT team here is only able to come up with bandage solutions.

Any input appreciated.

B.

This is the thing that ticks me off around here sometimes...when the police are called out for drugs or alcohal related things...they try and pick out something medically wrong with them so we would have to be called out to transport. Just because they don't want the paper work. This one call, it was a damestic...the pt was under the influence. They called us out for a wellfare check...nothing wrong with the pt except for being drunk. She didn't even want to go to the hospital...but the cop on scene said she either went to the ER or to jail...she chose the ER...

I got the paper work.

Some are lagit and I have no problems with that.