In France, when I helped an old lady who had slipped on ice, the emergency services were on site in less than 5 minutes, with all the competences and material to provide life saving interventions. And this was just normal.
Why does it look normal in the US to have to wait 20 minutes after having called for a gunfire, and only for a transport ambulance ?
The kicker was he said (he's a quiet, older, straight talker) "Thank God it didn't happen in the UK, if it had I would be dead."
[0] https://medicalnewsbulletin.com/response-time-emergency-medi...
I was talking to a couple of them in a bar the other day, who told me this.
Told me about getting stabbed, attacked, shot and other stuff they have to deal with. For $15/hr.
Both of them were looking for other jobs.
I know in our case, when an emergency happens, people panick, and keep trying to call 911; I have to wonder if that makes the phone lines backed up even more.
They called back over 10 minutes later ( I believe; I don't recall the exact number of minutes ).
Had to give up and get a neighbor to rush us to the hospital. As an American, it really does feel like the wheels are falling off of the bus so to speak.
“Current response time targets are for the responder to arrive at the scene within 10 minutes for 80% of responses, and within 15 minutes for 95% of responses”
Reading https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/article-abstrac..., the USA is a bit worse (table 1 shows the 90th percentile to be at 14 minutes in the suburbs). I would guesstimate that’s at least partly because of lower population density.
⇒ 20 minutes could just be an outlier. It also could be that some neighborhoods get disproportionately many high end outliers or that those numbers changed since 2015 (that’s were the data in the 2017 paper is from), though.
I would imagine the time to respond would vary widly by location, especially with covid raging.
US healthcare is a mess.
“Did you know that in the United States ambulances will not take you to the hospital unless you have insurance if you have an accident? OMG, yes! I read it on HN!”
The US perverse infatuation with healthcare as a business is kind of horrifying to those non-US citizens. If poking fun at it is what it takes to effect change then hurrah for the power of humour!
That is a wholly different situation where the patient is making the decision because of a lack of insurance instead of the EMS provider.
And…it’s generally because of ignorance that folks make that decision. They base it on rumor and assumption, where in many cases a simple phone call or two is all it takes to get those large charges decreased significantly. An ambulance provider has zero benefit to them in intentionally creating a bad debt account that will ultimately default.