Must read: Patients caught in middle of Orange County, CA helicopter war
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This is some real crap. How does this go on in 2018? Where is the adult leadership in these organizations that should have found a solution long before today?
Make sure you take the time to read the entire article by Jordan Graham and Tony Saavedra of The Orange County Register. Then ask yourself how the citizens are being served by two public safety agencies fighting over who’s going to transport seriously and critically ill and injured people to the hospital via helicopter.
The dispute is not some bureaucratic nonsense behind the scenes. It has been playing out in front of patients and their families and has delayed getting people to the hospital. There’s even an allegation by fire personnel that the sheriff’s helicopter crew tried to physically “snatch and grab” one patient. But the allegations of interference at emergency scenes cut both ways.
There’s now concern these battles will bring patient lawsuits claiming negligence. Officials have even mentioned the possibility of criminal prosecution against “OCFA pilots for ‘interfering’ with a ‘peace officer in the performance of their duties'”.
As I wrote, read the entire article. In an era when it is hard to be shocked by anything, you might find this quite disturbing.
Jordan Graham & Tony Saavedra, The Orange County Register:
In one 2016 incident, detailed in a letter by the county’s Emergency Medical Services director obtained by The Orange County Register, a conflict between sheriff’s deputies and Orange County Fire Authority paramedics delayed the transport of an elderly woman with a serious head injury. The woman required emergency neurosurgery at an area trauma center.
The patient suffered “subsequent disability,” according to the Jan. 10, 2017, letter to the Orange County Sheriff’s Dept. The medical director didn’t say whether the delayed transport contributed to that outcome.
“In this event as well as previously reviewed events, it appears that (the sheriff’s department’s) air rescue is delayed by (OCFA) ground units,” Dr. Sam Stratton, medical director of Orange County EMS authority, wrote in a report that fire officials described as one-sided.
