Y’all know AD and TOTW (and probably every other EMS blog) have bitched about frequent flyers…
Well, here’s one from my daughter (she’s a Paramedic and Battalion Chief out West). Go to the link HERE, and listen to the first two minutes…
Yes, she REALLY WAS calling 911 from the back of the ambulance that was taking her home from the hospital…
My daughter said this woman calls 20-30 times a day and they now have had to refuse to respond to her home; they are now required to forward them all to the fire department. She also said they have transported her up to 10 times in one day back and forth to the hospital.
And you wonder why insurance rates are going UP???
I’m sure Obama care will only increase this.
Not the reform we need.
Calling for the next ride while in an ambulance? Yikes. But ObamaKare will make everything better, because “everyone agrees” that “something must be done.”
Hogwash. You can’t get two random Americans to agree on the time of day, much less socialized medicine.
When the “patient” hand the phone off to the EMT I about spewed Coke all over my screen. When the call taker asks the EMT if they were aware she was calling 911 you can just see the EMT staring at the patient with YHGTBSM look on her face. Pretty sure that EMT had ETOH on board as soon as they could after shift.
BGM
Ed- Yep…
Rev- True! Not…
BGM- My daughter had a shit fit…
“Hogwash. You can’t get two random Americans to agree on the time of day, much less socialized medicine”.
Rev. Paul, please give a beverage alert first!
Frequent flyers – aarg!
I’ve had a patient (one in particular) who has called 911 more than once from the waiting room in my ER (usually because we didn’t take her back to a room at a time of her choosing). She has then handed her cell phone to the triage nurse for her to tell the 911 operator exactly where she was, only to receive the YHGTBSM look from the nurse.
Oh yeah. REGULAR basis for some folks… of course NONE of them ever pay a bill either…sigh
I think I would accidentally drop her phone and then step on it as I was bending over to retrieve it. Tell her the state will replace it soon.
WSF- Yep!
CP- LOL, she’d sue!!!
Pharmacies get these folks all the time along with the drug seekers, and the tweakers trying score some pseudoephedrine. On slow nights we’d sit behind the counter and play spot the tweaker, or as the cooks call them smurfs.
The hospital sees this all to often, and then so do the Medics;
a phone call from the lobby of the hospital is placed because the person-in-question is ‘waiting too long’, only to have the telecommunicator inform them EMS cannot respond when you are already IN the hospital ED. Those persons will then leave the hospital AMA and walk down the hill off hospital property and call again. Where EMS will be requested to take them to the OTHER hospital in town. There has been multiple people who have left and been taken to the other hospital only to call again and request to be taken back to the first….
I have been the Medic on that last 911 call before and had some other personnel show up on scene by request (city police). That person did in fact get transported, just not to the facility they thought they were going to… 🙂
PoppaJ- Yep, it’s becoming an epidemic!
Badger- That needs to be happening more… And real charges that the person has to PAY would also cut down on the BS.
I had a patient who was shot and called his friend to set up the retaliation shooting from the back of the ambulance!
Working in a nursing home right now, had a resident a couple of weeks ago call EMS because she was worried the nurse didn’t change her colostomy flange right… also had a couple who wanted transport because the nurse wouldn’t give an extra prn Norco and figured they could score some dilaudid or something.
Sweet Galloping Jesus.
I’d never make it as a 911 operator.