I know that in your county, if you call 911 and they send you to the hospital by ambulance, it’s considered emergent. If your insurance says different, you fight them.
No, he didn’t. Pre-hospital personel are medical experts. He was lucky.
To everyone who says driving is preferable, how much is a life worth? Even if your fire dept is one that charges for a trip, is risking the life of your loved one worth that risk? Yes, sometimes you get lucky.
Everyone who drives in a panic is putting many lives at risk; your loved one, yourself and multiple strangers. One red light can mean the difference between one patient and many.
My late husband had 5 heart attacks by the time he was 42 (he died with the fifth one). The first 2 he was stubborn headed and wouldn’t go by ambulance, the next 2 he had wised up and let me call them. That was so much better. I probably could have gotten him to the hospital in just about the same amount of time, but they were able to get him started on meds before getting there, so it helped slow things down and lessen the damage to his heart. I feel they probably helped save his life. With his fifth one, it took them a long time to get to us and he unfortunately died. I don’t think the outcome would have been different though, if I would have tried to take him myself.
In the spring during an emergency blood pressure episode I was sent from my Dr’s office to the ER. They told my husband to drive me, faster than an ambulance, and they called the ER who knew I was coming.
(I had anticipated having to wait but was surprisingly triaged in ahead of a guy who was actually bleeding from his head!:eek:)
I appreciate your posts in various threads, but every time we’ve had to call 911 a fire truck has pulled up to the curb, lights flashing, and nobody even gets out. Here in the US. And we’re billed for it. You can’t argue with fact, if you want to compare my bank statements against the medical bills and dates.
In my area typically a medical call will involve fire, police, and ambulance. Cops are cruising around the city and can often get someplace within a minute or two . They have basic first aid training and AEDs and can help secure the scene if needed. Fire/First responders come next from a nearby station in rescue truck (like an ambulance but not set up for transpoft) with more sophisticated equipment and training, and finally the ambulance comes from the hospital or a staging area to transport the patient. Police and fire don’t charge but a typical ambluance transport, and I’ve processed hundres of them, is north of a thousand dollars, even for a couple of miles.
A couple months after my valve repair surgery I developed what felt like a really painful chest cold. One night I went to urgent care and upon taking my pulse the doctor immediately wanted to send me to their ER which is two blocks away. She insisted on wanting to call me an ambulance and I had to sign a release to be allowed to drive myself. Id been driving for two weeks and figured id make it two more blocks thus saving myself a $800 two block ambulance ride.
Is it really quicker to drive, even if you’re close to the ER?
You call an ambulance, in most cases it shows up very quickly. The EMTs provide medical care - albeit not as much as the ER does, but they generally can spot something that needs to happen fast and provide stabilization and a fair bit of medical care. They also call ahead to the ER and the ER prepares to meet the ambulance and have all the necessary equipment and people assembled. The ambulance can also run red lights and move much faster than a standard car.
You drive, you don’t run red lights if there’s traffic coming, you don’t drive particularly fast because the cars aren’t getting out of your way. You then need to get into the ER and wait for them to do triage.
It’s a crapshoot IMO, and I’ve unfortunately been the person making the car-versus-ambulance call at least 3 times in the past year. The first time I chose car, and I think I chose wrong. The second time I remembered the first time and chose ambulance and am absolutely sure I made the right decision. The third time I chose car, for a much more minor incident, and I’m also sure I made the right decision.
Nowadays, unless I’m absolutely certain of the car method, I choose ambulance. Everyone I’m likely to be helping has insurance that will cover it, and I think I’d rather be safe than sorry.
The ambulance may have been tied up. The guys on the truck are also EMTs/Paramedics and will serve as first responders, stabilizing the patient until transport gets there.
The quicker a trained person gets their hands on the patient, the better.
If you have any worry that a heart may stop beating or a person may stop breathing in the next 15 minutes, it’s ambulance time. Mostly for the reason mentioned already: you can’t to CPR in the backseat of a Prius. Better to wait where you have a nice hard floor in case you need it and someone brings a vehicle they can do CPR in if you need it - not to mention has an AED.
Broken bones, bleeding that stops when you press a towel over it, abdominal pain, etc…sure, get a car ride if you’re close (please don’t try to drive yourself) and it doesn’t hurt too much to get in a car. But suspected heart attacks are ambulance time, unless you can literally carry the person to the ER in your arms.
First off, I’m an ER nurse in one particular location, so that’s what I’ll talk about, second off, I don’t know shit about money, and work hard at not learning. Having said that…
Shame on you people saying ya done good and got better care faster, you speak of what you do not know.
Everything that happens in the first 15 min in our ER for an MI workup could have been done on you couch by our paramedics.
They can even make the detrimination to take you directly to the local STEMI recieving hospital where you’d get the right care for a heart attack, shaving perhaps 30-40 mins off the time it takes to reopen a clogged vessel.
That’s kind of what I was thinking - people seem to be assuming that care starts only when the ambulance gets to the ER, which ain’t true. The paramedics can do a lot of stuff either in your house or in the ambulance itself, and can also help make the determination whether or not an ER visit is even needed.
There’s a great thread you can find by Googling “Things I Learned From My Patients”, and in it, the subject of car vs. ambulance is brought up. Most of the doctors agreed there were circumstances that warranted what they called (I think) the Homie Ambulance Service. There were even published studies done about it. Basically, if you’re shot in a drive by, you stand a better chance if your friends drive you to the ER and throw you out at the entrance. (There was no mention if someone called ahead, but I imagine the ER gets a heads up when they hear about the shooting on the police scanner.)
If you code enroute, the medics can do everything I can do, and do it immediately.
The geniuses who built my ER put the public entrance right next to the main hosp entrance which make its as far from my high acuity room as you can get. How quickly we can respond to someone passed out in the car can very depending on what’s going on inside, the medics only have one pt to worry about.
No offense to the OP, each situation is different, and you can only rarely be sure which was necessary until after the fact.
General aside to everyone else: if it take 3-4 neighbors/family to get the pt into the car because they broke their leg, or are very obese, but you don’t want to call an ambulance, bring the crew with you, it’s a mistake to think we have a lifting team just idling around for you.
I remember something like that on cops once. Instead of waiting for an ambulance the cops just tossed the victim in the back seat and made it to the hospital before the ambulance even left for the scene.
When a baby needs quick medical attention and should be closely watched while getting to it, it seems very silly to accept the large risk (including delay) associated with strapping him into a car seat in return for the very small benefit of extra safety in the unlikely event of a crash.
I have to agree. In general, in the emergency rooms I’ve been to and worked in, no one is sitting around listening to a police scanner, even if it’s not a busy time.