I won’t spend time explaining who Rube Goldberg was. If you don’t know, you can easily find out from the Internet. Once you understand that, you’ll understand why I chose the post title that I did.
Boulder Fire to test smaller vehicles for medical calls
Medical calls, not fires, account for more than half of all calls to which Boulder Fire-Rescue crews respond, and the number of medical calls increased 17 percent from 2006 to 2011.
Boulder’s fire department is looking at adding smaller vehicles for paramedics to respond to many of those calls without sending a fire engine or — when engines aren’t available — a ladder truck. A pilot program will test the idea at Fire Station No. 1, at 2441 13th St., across the street from Casey Middle School, starting in January.
So, the FD is going to buy new vehicles to respond to medical calls instead of sending big fire trucks to medical calls.
Oh, and they’re greening Boulder while they are at it,
One idea in the revised master plan for improving response to medical calls is to put smaller vehicles, most likely flex-fuel or hybrid sport utility vehicles, that could carry two people to medical calls instead of three in a fire engine.
I’m all for efficiency,
Information from the pilot program will be analyzed to determine if it saves money in fuel and wear-and-tear on the larger fire department vehicles and to see if it allows the department to be more efficient in how it responds to medical calls and fires.
Seems like a round about way to improve EMS response times. I have another idea. How about having AMR provide MORE ambulances? Radical huh?
One of the sleight of hand tricks used to improve EMS response times is to stop the response time clock when the first responders arrive, not when the ambulance arrives. That takes some of the pressure of of the ambulance service and sometimes allows them to claim faster response times than they actually have. I can’t say if that’s what goes on in Boulder, but it’s not unheard of. It’s also a form of cost shifting, which allows the ambulance service to use tax payer funded equipment to bolster their response time numbers. Of course the ambulance service, which provides the transport, also gets to keep all of the money and pays nothing to the municipality for the (free) use of their equipment and staff. Not that the fire service will complain, because responding to EMS calls, even if all they do is give the “Stare of life”, preserves jobs and budgets.
Just more fun and games with EMS, I guess. Which is supposed to be about timely and good patient care, but mostly seems to be a numbers game lately.
I doubt AMR would approve of your plan for them to add more ambulances. That would be too “Customer Centered.”
Not to mention too expensive. I’m not picking on AMR per se. Any private for profit concern would have the same objections. Which is when the fire service lobby jumps in and says, “We can do it faster and for less money.” Which they never can because with the fire service it’s about job preservation, not patient care. Then again response times have no real relationship to patient care or outcomes most of time. Response times are driven by political concerns.
TOTW, it’s ALWAYS been a numbers game, we both know that… As far as ambulances, I posted your new ambulance at my blog
That picture would be funny, if it wasn’t so close to the truth. And yes, I miss him!
Sorry TOTW, I’ll wait on this one. While I know there are places that play the numbers game regarding response times, I wouldn’t be so bold as to make that as an assumption here.
Many of our smaller communities send first responders on all medicals. Not because we want them to, but because they want to…a) they understand that for certain calls, first responders can be of great help…either before EMS arrives or to assist us afterward, b) they understand that their local citizens want/need to see what they’re’ paying for (which isn’t EMS, unless they call…we get no direct funding from the taxpayer teat). The suburban agencies learned long ago that it was cheaper to respond in a pickup truck (light rescue or grass-fire) than a full-on engine. But then, a lot of them run a crew of 2 anyway (because it’s too expensive to have 4 guys full time for an occasional fire).
The service I worked for previously didn’t have that luxury. The clock only stopped when the ambulance arrived. This forced them to staff enough units to meet their response requirement. And guess what? It worked.
Too radical, it can’t possibly work.