UHU's

[comedic]

My department recently took over ambulance transports with a dedicated 12 hour transfer car. Once the transfer car goes home, the non emergents are run by the 911 buses. The 911 crews are finding themselves up all night after a day of training, fire inspections, and equipment maintenance. Throw a few fires into the mix and the crews are getting burned out. Any requests for additional hours for the transfer car are met by the bosses with the call volume is not there to support it. How do other departments handle non emergent transfers? Does anyone know of a formula for UHU's that takes into account all the hours spent on "other assigned duties"?

[JakeEMTP]

Hence the problem with FF's being medics. If the 2 were separate entities, they wouldn't have this problem. Fire is fire, EMS is for medic's. The two are not interchangeable. They are two completely different professions.

I realize that your dept. run's both. Having your crews do both their day job ie: hydrant inspections, building inspections etc., than expecting them to run EMS and transfers all night is ludicrous.

[emt322632]

The company I run for now does alot of business in non-emergent transfers, we also do emergency calls. Currently, if a transfer comes in, and it is a stat trip (as defined by the ER docs) the emergency crew is required to go, no matter what time of day or night. I've found myself on a number of these after already working a 12-13 hour shift, and it's kinda brutal.

My advice to you is to try to convince your boss to have someone on call with the car. That way, if a run comes in, the car is available, though not at the station. This way, someone is on their way in with the car, and your 911 crews are free to run their calls without the worry of taking granny home at 2 am.

[1EMT-P]

Are there any private services in your area that would be willing to take over covering transports after your transport crew leaves. Maybe your agency could do 12 hours of coverage and the private could do 12 hours of coverage. Just a thought.

Good Luck!