JACKSON, Miss. — American Medical Response officials say EMS crews are spending too much time dropping patients off at the emergency department due to hospital procedures, which is leading to higher response times.
The ambulance service budgets 30 minutes for each patient transfer of care, but says hospital hand-off rules can double that time, WAPT News reports.
“Thirty-eight minutes might feel like a very short time over that 30-minute goal, but multiply that by dozens of patients at all the ERs in the area every day, and it rapidly becomes hours,” AMR representative Jim Pollard said.
Hinds County Supervisor Robert Graham said a possible solution could involve having another EMT or EMS provider with less training wait with the patient until they’re checked in. The objective is to get ambulances back on the road quicker, and it’s unnecessary to have experienced people waiting around when they could be saving lives, he said.
What we’re trying to do in the county is to make sure our ambulances are not stuck at the hospital waiting for paperwork to be done when they can be responding to calls,” Graham said.