Nursing Homes are spending thousands on Private Ambulances
By Arthur L Burton III
There many different Private owned Ambulance Companies in NYC that make their money supplying Emergency Medical Services to Nursing Homes. They bid for contracts with Nursing Homes and they charge to be on call to these Nursing Homes in emergencies. There is a serious problem with this type of service, one it is very costly and second the transport EMT worker might not be experienced in the event of an emergency. Transport EMT workers for Private Ambulance companies main function is taking a non-critical patient from the Nursing Home or mental institution to the Hospital. Corporations like Transcare pay their workers $10.00 to $12.00 per hour but charge on average about $500.00 per transport. The private ambulances have been the emergency transport for Nursing Home Residents regardless of the medical emergency. To some this seems like good business sense but in fact, if you have a family member in a Nursing Home you would want them to get the best care possible. This care should include emergency transport to the Hospital when they are ill. Most nursing home residents suffer with sepsis and GI bleeds and use plenty of medications that a Transport EMT would not know why a patient is taking a certain medication. The Truth is that the majority of the time EMT workers don not need to know what a medication does, but there are times in an emergency that medicine can give symptoms that might be misunderstood by the transport EMT because of their unfamiliarity of what the side effects the medicine causes.
The problem with all of this is the standard of care that a resident of a Nursing Home receives when being transported to the Hospital. In fairness this is article is not suggesting to get rid of private ambulances but to make persons aware that a transport EMT should not be called in extreme emergencies like cardiac arrest and severe cases of difficulty breathing.
There are a few other factors but this one seems to be the most obvious. Private ambulance companies cannot park their vehicle in an emergency room
