Text 13017, 60 rader
Skriven 2008-03-16 11:48:14 av Björn Forsström (2:203/614.61)
  Kommentar till text 12988 av Bob Ackley (1:300/3)
Ärende: American ambulance
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 BF>> 50 000 ambulances per year are not able to go to the nearest hospital
 BF>> because the ER is undermanned due to lack of money so many are dying in
 BF>> the ambulance during transporting all over the city.

 BA> I think 50K is a bit high.

That's the figure Fox gave.

 BA>  In any case I do know that many hospitals are
 BA> closing their emergency departments because they're losing so much money
 BA> keeping them open.  Which means - obviously - that there are fewer places
 BA> for ambulances to take emergency cases.

Ok....

 BA> Many years ago the rules/agreements in the Omaha area was that the rescue
 BA> squads (ambulances run by the city fire department) would take emergency
 BA> patients to the nearest emergency room.  Makes sense, doesn't it?

Yup.

 BA>  Then a
 BA> van full of Creighton University students went out of control and crashed
 BA> on the Interstate near the 150 or so bed Lutheran Hospital (since closed)
 BA> at about 0300.  Lutheran had *one* physician and *two* nurses on duty in
 BA> its ER and no trauma center,

Back home a regional SOS central control every ambulance in that area and
contact every hospital in the same area if there is such a big accident and
then
they know where to send every ambulance so those with worst injuries always
will come to the best equipted hospital and mostly they will even be
transported
with a helicopter.
Another thing they have found out is that we used to have those huge ambulances
that you have but those are mostly gone and replaced with smaller that can take
the patients quicker to the hospital and even those emergency-cars are soon
history as well because they didn't do much good. Sometimes they arrived after
the ambulance due to that they often were on an other assignment on the other
side of the area.

 BF>> And America have the best healthcare in the world, my ass.

 BA> I could argue the point a bit.  If you will remember several years ago an
 BA> airliner crashed on landing at Sioux City Airport, about 100 miles north
 BA> of Omaha.  That day, Archbishop Bergan Mercy Hospital in Omaha (where I
 BA> was working at the time) chartered a couple of busses and sent thirty of
 BA> its nurses to Sioux City to assist Mercy Hospital there with its case load
 BA> from the crash, the nurses were in Sioux City for about a week.

Still, it's good but not the best in the world.

 BA> You will note that in both of the preceding stories there was *no*
 BA> government funding or intervention (in the UNMC case the decision making
 BA> was done by the administrator on duty, not by any politician).

Our SOS central can put whatever they think is proper on their feet.

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 * Origin: . (2:203/614.61)