Understanding the Overuse of Emergency Medical Services

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The Misuse and Abuse of Emergency Medical Services

The 9-1-1 emergency dispatcher, dispatches a call to the local fire department. “55 year- old male, chest pains, has been having chest pains for the last couple hours.” The department responds to the call, as they would any call. This is the 4th time this week they have been called out to the same old man, with the same complaints. These patients are known as the “frequent flyer’s”, they received this nick-name from constantly calling EMS personal, when deemed not appropriate. Some of these patients call everyday, and every fire station has that several individuals who gives them a purpose daily. This is a problem in the Emergency Medical Service field and seems to be growing out of control. …show more content…

A lot of the time, a “frequent flyer” will call out for emergency medical services, receive care inside their homes, and then refuse transport to hospital. The base-pay for a ride to hospital on an ambulance, is $400 dollars. That is starting, if the emergency medical services personal administrate medicine or treatment, the cost can rise up to $5,000 dollars. For patients that do not have medical insurance, this tab is picked up by tax payers. The National Fire Protection Association tracks all 9-1-1 calls annually, said fire departments nationwide responded to about 15.7 million total medical aid calls in 2008. Using that data, the National Academies of Emergency Dispatch, said about 20% of the calls are classified as non life-threatening and don't require a paramedic (Kavilanz). The ethical duty of any emergency medical services personal is to respond to any call without any judgment. Departments everywhere will always respond to a skinned knee, just as fast as they will respond to a school shooting. This is, not only adding additional stress on the medic squad, but it is distracting emergency medical services personal from focusing on potential actual life-threatening …show more content…

Many other communities jumped in and started similar programs, and also has a huge decrease in non-emergency calls.
Most of the time people who are super users and call 9-1-1 all the time, are just lonely with mental health issues, they want companionship so these programs are designed for those people. Companies like these will take a huge load off the firefighters and paramedics, they can have more time to train and answer life-threatening emergency calls instead of wasting hours transporting the same old man who calls everyday about his migraine. This will also save tax-payers millions of dollars. Emergency medical services is a very high stressful job, and if there is anyway they can reduce the stress, it would be to implement these programs in all

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