Policy:

 

• Greenville County Emergency Medical Services and all DHEC Licensed Rapid Responder Agencies that follow these COG's shall report all calls encountered during routine operations and ensure all potentially injured citizens are cared for.

 

Purpose:

 

• To provide guidance to all field personnel on your required duty to act in the event that you encounter an additional or different patient than assigned needing medical treatment.

 

Procedure:

 

Unit enroute to a call find another call

 

• • Notify the Communications Center that you are stopping at the scene to assess the patient(s).
  • Crew must evaluate all information and make a decision to attend to the patient at the greatest risk basked on:
    • The Communications Center's assessment of the condition of the patient at the scene of the original call.
    • The condition of the patient at the scene of the found call.
    • Consider the response time that a second ambulance would have to travel to either call.
    • Are there first responders or medically trained personnel on the scene and available to respond to either call?
  • Once you determine which call has the greatest risk for the patient, alert the Communications Center of the call you plan to attend.

 

Transporting a non-critical patient comes upon another call

 

• Advise the Communications Center that you are stopping at the scene to access the patients.
• If the patient of the found call does not require ALS and the first responders are on the scene, you may elect to continue transport of the original patient.
• If you elect to continue transport, advise the found patient(s) that you will have a second ambulance respond.
• If the found patient is critical and requires ALS, your partner will remain with your original patient while you attend to the found patient(s).

 

Ambulance has an emergency patient on board and finds a second call

 

• Slow down or stop only long enough to inform the citizens at the scene that you have a critical patient on-board and another ambulance is enroute. Continue immediate transport of the first patient.
• Ensure Communications Center awareness of incident location and that additional resources are responding.

 

Responding agency is advised that there are now more than one patient in a nursing or other healthcare facility requiring EMS

 

• Notify the Communications Center that you have staff requesting another ambulance for a different patient.
• Crew must evaluate all information and make a decision to attend the patient at the greatest risk based on:
  • The condition of the patient at the scene for the original call.
  • The condition of the second patient at the scene.
• Crew may have to split up to provide care to both patients until additional resources arrive.
• If contact is already made with original patient and crew is unable to split up, advise staff of situation and that there is another ambulance on the way.