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Are you really part of EMS???


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This should have been the shortest topic ever on the city. The question is easily answered with "Any service that does not do any 911 calls or emergency hospital to hospital transports is not EMS. Do not know if all you do is haul people home and to appointments if you should even be called medical."

But now we've gone over every what if scenario. Again there is no way you are EMS if you do not do emergency calls. Let it go. Do your job. Pull your heads out of the dark hole they are in. If you have a taxi driver job, do it the with the utmost professionalism. Alright end this topic it has been answered and re-answered.

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This should have been the shortest topic ever on the city. The question is easily answered with "Any service that does not do any 911 calls or emergency hospital to hospital transports is not EMS. Do not know if all you do is haul people home and to appointments if you should even be called medical."

But now we've gone over every what if scenario. Again there is no way you are EMS if you do not do emergency calls. Let it go. Do your job. Pull your heads out of the dark hole they are in. If you have a taxi driver job, do it the with the utmost professionalism. Alright end this topic it has been answered and re-answered.

Since you keep dragging that out like it's as simple as lining up two categories, I'll ask you. Does that mean that if a company does SNF -> emergency room runs constantly [everything from, "It's a holiday and we're short staffed, so we need to get people out of here" BS runs to "Wow, patient XYZ is barely breathing, let's set up a BLS transport to the local ER"], that it is a part of the EMS system.

Likewise, if your company does both 911 and transport, are you a part of the EMS system if the only reason you see a 911 call is because someone called in sick once 4 months ago?

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Since you keep dragging that out like it's as simple as lining up two categories, I'll ask you. Does that mean that if a company does SNF -> emergency room runs constantly [everything from, "It's a holiday and we're short staffed, so we need to get people out of here" BS runs to "Wow, patient XYZ is barely breathing, let's set up a BLS transport to the local ER"], that it is a part of the EMS system.

Likewise, if your company does both 911 and transport, are you a part of the EMS system if the only reason you see a 911 call is because someone called in sick once 4 months ago?

My post already answered that. The origional question was if you never do 911 never do emergency calls are you EMS. No you are not. Many services may barely but if they do some then they are still EMS. Sorry very simple. Very clear cut. Why waste more time. If you have a job your happy with enjoy it do it well regardless of whether EMS or not.

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In response to "Are You A Part of EMS?"

I am the operations manager for a large ambulance service in Orange County California. My organization is primarily an interfacility transport company and perform the types of calls that were described in this post. My personnel are deal with this question frequently from other EMTs and in some cases from personnel from local fire departments.

Let me tell you about my employees. We transported over 80,000 pateints last year, mostly IFT. Out of that number, 35% are emergent cases that are being transported to an ED for treatment. We deal with psych pateints, CCT with sometimes critically ill patients and occasionally run back-up calls for a few of the local agencies.

My personnel are all trained and National Registry certified Emergency Medical Technicians. I submit to you, yes, we are a part of the EMS system in our county. As a large organization, we are one of the first organizations that are called in a large incident. We have responded to several large incidents in the recent past including the wildfire operations in San Diego County this past October. We are listed with our State EMS Authority as an Ambulance Strike Team Provider. All of my strike team members have been trained in ICS and function quite well in that capacity.

Again, I submit to you, regardless of what organization an EMT works for, they are a part of the EMS system. We ALL deal with emergencies big and small and take care of people when they are at their worst. This does not change with jurisdiction or what name is on the shoulder patch. We all do essentially the same type of work. If something were to happen in our state, I can guarantee you, my employees and my organization will be ready to enroute and take care of business. We are all a part of the EMS system.

Not bad for an IFT company.......

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In response to "Are You A Part of EMS?"

I am the operations manager for a large ambulance service in Orange County California. My organization is primarily an interfacility transport company and perform the types of calls that were described in this post. My personnel are deal with this question frequently from other EMTs and in some cases from personnel from local fire departments.

Let me tell you about my employees. We transported over 80,000 pateints last year, mostly IFT. Out of that number, 35% are emergent cases that are being transported to an ED for treatment. We deal with psych pateints, CCT with sometimes critically ill patients and occasionally run back-up calls for a few of the local agencies.

My personnel are all trained and National Registry certified Emergency Medical Technicians. I submit to you, yes, we are a part of the EMS system in our county. As a large organization, we are one of the first organizations that are called in a large incident. We have responded to several large incidents in the recent past including the wildfire operations in San Diego County this past October. We are listed with our State EMS Authority as an Ambulance Strike Team Provider. All of my strike team members have been trained in ICS and function quite well in that capacity.

Again, I submit to you, regardless of what organization an EMT works for, they are a part of the EMS system. We ALL deal with emergencies big and small and take care of people when they are at their worst. This does not change with jurisdiction or what name is on the shoulder patch. We all do essentially the same type of work. If something were to happen in our state, I can guarantee you, my employees and my organization will be ready to enroute and take care of business. We are all a part of the EMS system.

Not bad for an IFT company.......

You handle emergency calls then. So would be EMS. The OP said company in question did no emergency calls. Any service that does not do any EMERGENCY CALLS IS NOT EMS.

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You handle emergency calls then. So would be EMS. The OP said company in question did no emergency calls. Any service that does not do any EMERGENCY CALLS IS NOT EMS.

Spenac, in case you missed the last 9 or so pages, the thread has evolved past the original poster's question. In fact, you even posted,

No Emergency response, not EMS.
earlier in this thread. Technically, since that didn't answer the OP's question, as seen in other parts of this thread, including a few posts that you have responded to, wouldn't that be off topic also?

As to the substance of this thread, on the level of the individual it's largely sematics. I honestly can't believe that some companies run ambulances and never transport to the emergency room [ignoring the TC that they may end up coming across] once in a while.

Looking at this from a system wide view [education, politics, funding, etc] there should be a distinction made, but that has been beat to death and is for another thread.

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Most rural EMSE services here do their share of interfacility transfers, mainly due to the fact that the sending hospital doesn't have the appropriate equipment / specialized people for whatever Tx or exam the pt needs. For instance, not every hospital has a CT machine. There is a separate number for the hospital to call if they need a pt transferred, they do NOT call 911.

Granted a lot of these transfers that are sent by ambulance are crap, paid for by WE THE TAXPAYERS, some are in genuine need of transport by ambulance. Some go BLS, others go ALS for obvious varying reasons. There is one company in particular I can think of here that does ONLY transfers, and when they're lucky the city may request them to go to a lodge or other such facility for a minor little e-call that unfortunately the city cannot do, due to red alert status.

Now, some of these "EMT's" haven't even done an IV in years as their pt's are already set, so basically they are "ambulance drivers" with oxygen, a stethoscope and a sphygmomanometer. Put one of those guys in a serious e-call and they'll crap the bed all over the place.

They may have a registration number which allows them by law to call themselves an emergency medical technician (of varying levels). Only thing is, what's the emergency in driving someone to a doctor's appointment? Obviously, someone who has done let's say 500 e-calls and 30 transfers (just throwing numbers out there) can say they have experience in EMS. Someone who has done 400 transfers and 10 e-calls, I would say cannot.

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I will trow in my 2 cents, but I will say this, determining whether you transport or do emergency calls does not conclude or decide whether someone is really part of EMS. Just as you have an immediate emergency to a response call, during transport a stable patient can automatically without any warning code on you or have a complication, and being a certifide EMT or paramedic I think answers the question are you really part of EMS? That's all I have to say.

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