Fort Worth (1080 KRLD) - EMS systems across the country are experiencing delays in offloading patients into emergency rooms.
MedStar in Tarrant County has been able to avoid that fate.
MedStar spokesman Matt Zavadsky says there are several factors contributing to the delays, which at times can stretch for several hours.
"It's the volume of patients that are coming to the emergency room with COVID-related illness symptoms and just this incredible volume," says Zavadsky, "combined with some staffing challenges that are happening in the hospitals that literally the hospitals just don't have capacity in the emergency department to accept another patient coming in by ambulance."
And that can lead to some very serious problems.
"When ambulances are delayed at emergency departments like we're seeing across the country and across the state, that is depleting the resources available to respond to other 911 calls in the community," Zavadsky says.
Fortunately, MedStar has been able to avoid those delays that have been plaguing EMS systems elsewhere.
Zavadsky says that's because MedStar has several innovative programs in place designed to avoid overcrowding emergency rooms when it's not necessary.
"We have one program that if the patient has a minor medical complaint and it appears to be COVID related, we don't take them to the hospital, even if the patient wants to go," Zavadsky says. "We treat them on scene, we give them information (and) resources to be able to seek alternate medical care."
Another program makes use of telemedicine.
"For minor medical complaints, we can use telemedicine at the scene of the call to consult with a local emergency physician and navigate patients away from an emergency department, if it's okay to do that (and) if it's clinically safe to do that," says Zavadsky.
In some cases, patients who would at other times be held in a hospital for observation would instead be observed in their homes.
"We've partnered with several hospitals that they will discharge patients from the ER where they might have held them for (up to) 12 hours to be observed," Zavadsky says. "They're now sending those patients home, and our community paramedics are doing home visits and touching base with those patients at home."
Zavadsky says to ensure that those who need EMS attention the most urgently get that attention, MedStar uses an evidence-based prioritization protocol.
"We're going to prioritize calls to make sure that we're going to the high priority calls before we go to the lower priority calls," says Zavadsky.