Video from NBC about 911 abusers

I almost missed this thanks to the football game tonight, but was able to get it online. the previews for this story were completely different than the story they tell in the video.



I think this is a foot in the door to address the abuses of the 911 system and possibly reach out to our communities about what an emergency is.

I think the most interesting part of this video was the dispatch in the beginning sending 2 engines and an ambulance to a trouble breathing call. 2 engines...10 people...1 patient...

Comments

Anonymous said…
When the emergency department starts only accepting emergency patients then I'll be in favor in emergency only 9-1-1.
The Happy Medic said…
Timothy,
Don't tease me like that.

:)
Rescue Monkey said…
Way to go DC EMS. Sounds like they are on the door step of community paramedicine. Cold calling frequent high risk callers and providing "check ups" and advice.

EMS needs to get in a preventative role in health care. The fire service has already shown that prevention & education works. Look at the statistics for structure fires. Thanks to many hard working fire mashals the number has decreased over the last century.

EMS needs to adopt a similar role in preventitive medicine. Doctors no longer make house calls, but we, as paramedics, still do and we can make a difference.
Fire Critic said…
Yeah...you unintentionally jumped the gun on the whole EMSless FD huh?
brendan said…
I dunno.... I can think of a lot of EMS agencies WAAAAY more professional and progressive than DCFD that aren't doing anything like this yet.

Call me crazy, but I think DCFD ought to get a better grip on their day-to-day operations before they start striking out into a world of primary care that none of their people are properly educated for.

(For those that don't know, the NBC story is a very, very poor attempt to cover this story: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/04/us/04firehouse.html?_r=2 .)
The Happy Medic said…
FC, that's what the previews were suggesting. The voice over talked about firefighters being bothered with medical emergencies.

The article mentioned above I think is in the same vein, but the video has less firemen complaining.

EMSless FD? Could work, but a lot of FFs are going to lose a job. Including me.
The Observer said…
Greetings from KCMO! This report and an article in the New York Times on September 4th on the same engine company come at a time when we in KC are having a great debate about how our currently stand alone non-profit EMS organization, Metropolitan Ambulance Services Trust,(or MAST as it is known to one and all) will or will not be fully merged into city government, and if so, will it be as "the ambulance department" or become part of the fire department. Part of the hot mess of the debate is our city, at times, has demonstrated that it is not a real great manager of services. There are also power issues involving unions. I'll not bore you with all the details. Plenty of MSM and bloggy coverage out there.

However, the question of the appropriate place to place the administration of EMS is a very good question. According to some of our city council people 80% of EMS systems are under the supervison of the fire department. To this audience: does that sound right?

As an ER RN and former EMT, I want my ambulance service to be well run, whoever runs it.

By the way, good on DC to try and intervene with those frequent fliers. We'll need to watch that and see if it works.
The Observer said…
By the way, I'd love to only accept ESI level 1,2, and 3 in the ED, but then I'd probably be out of a job!
Anonymous said…
My service plus the fire service and police all recently did some PR based on the date 09/09/09 i.e 999. It was funny that in the press conference the Fire Service were telling the press to encourage people to call 999 if in any need for help, they then went on to say they had 5000 calls in the last year. Then came the ambulance service who told the press to tell the public to think twice about calling 999 and only call if it was a real emergency, then went onto inform the press that during the same time frame, the ambulance service had dealt with 400,000 calls. There's the difference for you!!!
Anonymous said…
I was also interested in the size of the first dispatch shown. When we get a huge initial recommend like that where I live, it's a case of politics. I wonder if DC has the same resource-wasting problem...
The Observer said…
Here one FD vehicle gets sent to certain medical calls to accompany the ambulance. Usually it's a "pumper", occasionally a "rescue" and rarely a "truck". Each has 3-4 firefighters aboard. The ambulance are 2 person crews, paramedic and EMT.

I put the names of the apparatus in quotes cause I have noticed some regional differences in terminology. Even after 20 years in KCMO, I still slip and refer to "engine" when I mean "pumper"!
Ralph said…
"risk thier lives responding fast to calls"..........WTF? If we are driving reckless to calls, we are NOT doing our job correctly. If you don`t GET THERE......who did you help???