Trust me... if people really knew...
How serious this situation was -- it wouldn't just be George Smitherman wearing those adult diapers.
So be forewarned... if you're planning on having a heart-attack in the Greater Toronto Area... please be sure to book your ambulance ahead of time...
The frantic calls from Toronto EMS to city hospitals warn again and again there are no ambulances to respond to 911 calls.This really isn't news; it's been like this for years. I have a friend who's a Toronto paramedic and he could scare the snot out of anybody who has a friend, or family member, with a serious health condition.
In text messages obtained by the Sun, EMS duty officers plead with hospitals to free up paramedics who are sitting with patients waiting to be admitted.
On March 10, an unnamed EMS duty officer warned hospitals that available ambulance levels were gravely low.If only Dalton hadn't been pissin' away all those taxpayer nickels and dimes.
"We have three available ambulances in Toronto, we are unable to respond to 911 calls, please offload some crews ASAP," one message sent just after 10 p.m. reads.
Less than 15 minutes later, the situation gets worse.
"Update, we have no available units in our system," the next message reads. "We are looking after 40 patients in (emergency department) hallways, please free up some of our resources as public safety is at risk."
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LAST WORD: Here's the thing... you got kids?
On March 1, several Echo calls -- which could be for a child not breathing, for example -- only hit the standard 66% of the time.*
On March 4, Echo calls received in the afternoon were only responded to in less than nine minutes 33% of the time.
11 comments:
Do you know how many were probably off driving patients to Niagara Falls or Buffalo?
Likely another 40.
Bob Rae's solution last time wat to cut the number of students allowed to medcal schools. Therefore no doctors to bill ohip.
Will he next cut EMS jobs? Therefore fewer patients will get to those hallways.
We're just so screwed with so many Liberal f#@k-ups in charge!
How can this be happening with all the money Dalton has raised from the health premium and put into the health care system? How can this happen after Paul Martin fixed health care for a generation? Could it possibly be that money is not the problem - the problem is the system and its design - if only we could get the left wingers to stop lying to everybody, stop overpaying union hacks and bureaucrats and allow the health care system to operate in a more open and flexible manner. As long as they continue to put ideology ahead of people's health, they will never permit an honest debate on our health care system. If anyone truly believes the "progressives" care about health after the disaster they have made of our system, I have a bridge to sell - give me a call.
But liberals have a solution to all our problems... import immigrant doctors and nurses from poor and desparate third world countries. Not that we can be comfortable with their skills or abilities or the fact that their home countries are underserved by medical staff too... but it creates more new voters to prop up liberals in office. (real conservative)
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oh please, please, please... don't get me started on dalton mcslippery.
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But,don't forget it's free & universal!
Currently the rules are that the ambulance attendant has to stay with the patient until he/she has been assessed. There is no special process to speed this up to get the EMS crews back on the street to answer calls, they can be waiting for hours in a hallway for staff to transfer patients. Could we not just set up a system of some kind of nurse monitored waiting/observation room and get these people back on the roads doing their jobs? I guess not. That just might save money while saving lives.
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"ron says... all the money Dalton has raised from the health premium..."
how about all the money dalton has needlessly pissed away.
humour me here for a moment.
do you think the health care system could benefit from an extra billion dollars?
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Here in Calgary, Foothills Hospital has a special station in a hallway staffed by the paramedics. The incoming cases are passed off to the hospital paramedics, and the crews go back out. It's not perfect, and often there will be more cases then it can handle (which means other paramedics are there watching their own cases), but it helps.
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"anon said... Here in Calgary..."
in toronto... at some point in time... ems brass deployed a cube van that could hold a half-dozen patients on stretchers.
not sure that it was a real hit with patients.
medics referred to it, somewhat pejoratively, as "motel 6".
don't know if they still do it.
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Liberal incompetence is the death of people.
I see tax dollars, hundreds of millions of tax dollars.
I see dis-elected liberal/socialist politicians, many dis-elected liberal/socialist politicians.
Travelling the country, talking to disgruntled government employee union members, to report, in the end, that the solution is....
MORE POWER AND MONEY, FOR MORE DISGRUNTLED GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE UNION MEMBERS, RECEIVING MILLIONS AND BILLIONS MORE TAX DOLLARS....
uselessly dumped into the system, which is only broken due to lack of funding, and not enough control given to failed socialist monopoly pipe dreams, with imperfect adherence to the utopia espoused by the vaunted United Nations.
Cheers!
knotsmart
P.S. And of course, it's all the fault of scary S. Harper and Bushitler, with their frightening neocon world domination warmongering.
P.P.S. Shouldn't we be consulting Robert Mugabe for tips on sustainable development?
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