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Woman's 42-minute ambulance wait rapped by Healthcare Commission
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by Dave Keating | August 21, 2008 at 12:29 am
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An ambulance in the UK took a whopping 42 minutes to reach an injured student who was hit by a car. The Great Western Ambulance Service NHS Trust, which operates this particular fleet, had received complaints before.
An ambulance service which took 42 minutes to attend a critically injured student must improve, the Healthcare Commission said yesterday.
Rebecca Wedd, 23, was hit by a BMW car as she walked with friends in May last year.
Agriculture student Rebecca lay injured for 42 minutes at Coates, Glos, before she was flown by air ambulance to Frenchay hospital in Bristol where she died.
The wait was more than five times the national target of eight minutes.
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Patrick M (not verified)at 08:08 on October 21st, 2008
Having been an EMT in Los Angeles California from 1991 to 2001, all I can say is, "Forty two minutes? Could be worse."
In L.A., our fire department responds to medical calls and most areas contract out for a private ambulance to respond as well for transport. In the case of a 911 call, the time from call to arrival of an ambulance can be as long as 20 minutes depending on when the fire department actually calls for transport.
That's right, first 911 is called and the rescue or engine (or both) respond to the scene. Once there they determine the level of priority for the patient and then call the ambulance service to send transport. Already you have built in delays, but in a majority of cases, this goes unnoticed.
On private calls however from the public, for anything from heart attacks to falls or possible overdoses an ambulance can take anywhere from 15 minutes to two hours to arrive.
Case in point; I receive a call from an insurance carrier requesting an ambulance for a patient experiencing chest pains and shortness of breath. The patient is 35 miles away from the closest ambulance at rush hour on a very busy Friday afternoon. I tell the caller that we have at least a 90 minute ETA - but that there is a fire station and local ambulance service just 2 miles from that address, "They could handle that for you in 10 minutes."
No, I'm told, they can wait for us to arrive.
Huh? They can wait?
"Okay, we'll take the call, but I have to tell you that the patient might be dead before we arrive."
Then I'm told that instead of taking the patient to the closest emergency room, we are to transport them - again in traffic on a Friday afternoon, to a hospital 15 miles from that address.
One crew gone now for almost 3 hours. I only have 11 ambulances on duty that day.
And that is the way the system works now - private. But there is a cry and clamor for a UK style NHS in the US.
Name anything - anything - that improves when run by the government.
National healthcare models promote abuse. Unless you are going to have a never ending supply of ambulances and crews to sit on every street corner, and immediately replaced by another when called away - 42 minute reposne times may become more common.