WFTV
LAKE COUNTY, Fla. — WFTV investigated on Monday a complaint that three emergency rooms at Lake County hospitals are so swamped that patients in ambulances are waiting up to 90 minutes to be taken in, meaning the ambulances can’t go to other calls.
Administrators at one hospital said it’s not true.
The two sides don’t agree on how long it’s taking for the paramedics to hand off patients to the emergency room doctors and nurses, but Emergency Medical Services insists that it’s too long.
For some paramedics and emergency medical technicians, they said most frustrating part of the job is getting stuck at a hospital.
“Even though we have a unit at a facility, an ambulance 911 calls still don’t stop,” said Charles Johnson, EMS.
Administrators said Lake-Sumter EMS is being stretched thin because its teams have to wait too long to hand off patients to local emergency rooms.
“This week alone, we do have delayed off-loads. We arrive at a hospital with a patient. They’re busy, and sometimes we’re waiting one and a half to two hours to off-load our patients,” said Jim Judge, EMS executive director.
Judge told the Lake County Commission that the time it takes to turn over a patient to one of the county’s three hospitals needs to be 20 minutes or less. He said during the busier winter months, it can take three hours.
“As an average or as a whole, here at Waterman, that’s not the case,” said Chief of Emergency Medicine, Dr. Floriano Putigna.
Putigna said the 6,100 patients who arrived at his emergency room last month were assigned to a bed within an average of 12 minutes.
“We’re not going to say we don’t have any delay at all, but overall as soon as a bed is turned around, they get off-loaded into a bed,” said James Reese, emergency department manager
Judge said he wants to have meetings with the administrators of Florida Hospital Waterman, Leesburg Regional Medical Center, and South Lake Hospital to talk about the time issues.
Reprinted with permission from WFTV.