Frequent Fliers

Every business has regular customers and EMS is no different. In our line of work, patients we see on a regular or even semi-regular basis (once a month or so) are known as Frequent Fliers. They don't collect any mileage points from us for their trips to the hospital in the back of the ambulance...they just call us frequently and they are driven (flown) to the hospital.

We had one a while back that - for whatever reason - always had problems in the wee hours of the morning. It got to the point that as soon as we heard the address, we knew (for the most part) what the nature of the call was and who the patient would be when we arrived. Obviously, we never knew for sure until we actually got to the house...and you never want to ASSUME in this business...gets you in trouble! So, you answer every call as if it's your first time to be there and try to treat each call individually.

Because the patient's condition and address were so well known, I got to where I had memorized some of the patient's personal information..date of birth, medicines, allergies, etc. Almost better than my own family's!!! Sometimes, this scenario plays out in the end stages of some one's life and eventually they pass away.

There is another address we have been to about 4 times in the last year or so and it looks like it is shaping up to be another frequent flyer for us. The challenge is that sometimes people don't have health insurance or transportation to the hospital and the ambulance crew becomes their first line of defense and the Emergency Room Doctors become their primary care physicians. This is a shame because you never know if a call like this is taking away from another call that could be a TRUE emergency situation. Someone should do a research project on this for a Doctorate dissertation!! As long as we have unaffordable health care in this country, we will continue to see this problem escalate.

I know this sounds morbid, but EMS people often read the obituaries. It allows us to keep up with the population in our town, especially those people that have been former patients of ours. We don't get a lot of feedback on patients once we load them into the ambulance, so this helps close the loop for us. I think I may have mentioned this before and I bet this won't be the last time it is mentioned!!