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From: thoracicsurgpa at msn.com
> ...EMTALA regulations provide for required response of 250 yards...

 

--> Wow!

 

There must be huge difficulties in this sort of thing... Do you have a map of the area you "cover"? Is it 250 from the ED or from the hospital perimeter? Or is it from any part of the ED?

 

What do you do if you pick up a patient who's collapsed with something your hospital does NOT cover and who would have done better being picked up by an ambulance? Or do you cover everything anyway in your ED?

 

My hat's off to you for managing that sort of a service.

 

Our rule's to call an out-of-hospital team for out-of hospital situations. To define where the hospital ends - if you look up and see sky, you call an ambulance. So, yes, even 5 metres outside our ED door, we'll call an ambulance and do the best we can as bystanders until they get there... And if that includes dragging some patients into the ED, then so be it, but it's not expected.

 

A couple of notes, though, on how different things are here:

- I have never heard of anyone anywhere in the UK being "dropped" at the entrance to the ED, like I understand happens a lot in the USA. Not heard of even a single such event here.

- If there's someone else on this list from the UK who has heard of it, then please do let me know, for my own curiosity.

- Our windows don't open wide enough for people to fall out. If they did manage it and we get told, we call for a rescue team (which will probably be a fire-truck as well) as that sort of a patient will take expertise in moving without harm AND it will take us out of the ED for too long AND it may well be a crime scene, so the police will want to run the show anyway...

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