Rediculus Use of 999/112, calls dealt with??

Balfie

Friend of mine, works for the EHB Ambo, an was telling me, they got a emergency call, for a house that was directly across the road from Our Ladys Childrens Hospital, got there to find that a foreign couple had called, cause their child had a nose bleed, so instead of walking over to the hospital, used up and ambulance, that could have been used for something more serious, has this happened to many members of any emergency service often? and what kinda calls have you guys got that really either made you, laugh, or cringe when you turned up to the "emergency call"???

timmywex

Ah see thats just them thinking that going in via ambulance will make them skip the queue.

Crafty buggers.....but it fails miserably

pah

The amount of sh1te that comes through on the emergency lines is unreal.

It's not screened atm so i've often had people phoning looking For Garda
So&So at the local station to call about some form.

A lot of people don't understand what an "emergency" is. It's certainly not being stuck in traffic in Ballywherever cos the horse fair is on!!


Edit * also I think it's spelt "ridiculous" :P

Delancey

I used to work in the 999/112 service - unbelievable the rubbish calls that came in - especially garda calls which included people calling to complain that some '' bollox of a bouncer won't let me into xyz club , I want the Guards to make him let me in '' !
People calling to ask questions about Garda recruitment , people asking about routine crap like dog licences , dogs barking , noisy parties, noisy Garda Helicopter , etc - the list goes on.

Ambulance calls were abused a lot as well - they seem to be a certain % of the population that are unable/unwilling to access medical services by means other than dialling 999 - I have to say non-nationals appear to be dis-proportionately represented in this group. Some people are motivated by the mistaken belief that they will be seen faster / get a bed quicker.

Rubbish calls include '' my baby is crying for the last 10 minutes '' , '' I have toothache for the last 3 weeks '' , I stubbed my toe , etc - alas these calls all got an ambulance response. The ambulance services maintain they are legally obliged to answer every call although there is a conspiracy theory it suits them to answer every bullsh1t call as it boosts their stats and backs up their case for increased funding - just a theory mind...:rolleyes:

Interestingly some regional ambulance controls are much tougher than others in dealing with such nonsense.

Vorsprung

Can the ambulance service refuse to pick someone up?

Delancey

Vorsprung wrote: »

Can the ambulance service refuse to pick someone up?

I think the official stance is that they cannot refuse any call but having said that it can depend on the part of the country - a few areas sent an Ambulance on every call no matter how ridiculous while other areas were quite robust in refusing to dispatch on bullsh1t calls. I always thought that a privatised service ( sacrilege to even mention that on this forum ! ) would be very effective at ' diverting/deflecting ' clearly non-emergency calls.

In fairness the greatest abuse of 999 is in relation to Garda calls - for every rubbish ambulance call there were 20 rubbish Garda calls and I'm not exaggerating.

mikemac

Are there penalties for making fake calls? I'm sure there are but I never hear of prosecutions. I suppose it's not easy to catch someone, Eircom payphones and mobiles phones that are never registered.

I was doing a course and a Limerick fire brigade officer came in to show us how to do first aid.
He complained about countless hoax calls from payphones in certain parts of the city. And you don't have to know Limerick well to guess the areas.
"Come quick, chimney fire in this area of O'Malley Park" and other areas.

With PAYG mobiles, I'd say it's even worse these days.

Delancey

There are penalties for making hoax calls but not robust enough.

That said the majority of hoax calls get weeded out early on and my guess is that only a % of them actually result in an emergency response - hoax calls often have certain features which make the 999 Operator or Garda/Ambulance/Fire Brigade staff suspicious. Best not to discuss those tell tale signs on a public forum though............

Zambia

feelingstressed wrote: »

Are there penalties for making fake calls? I'm sure there are but I never hear of prosecutions. I suppose it's not easy to catch someone, Eircom payphones and mobiles phones that are never registered.

I was doing a course and a Limerick fire brigade officer came in to show us how to do first aid.
He complained about countless hoax calls from payphones in certain parts of the city. And you don't have to know Limerick well to guess the areas.
"Come quick, chimney fire in this area of O'Malley Park" and other areas.

With PAYG mobiles, I'd say it's even worse these days.

Here in Oz you cant use a Payg mobile before registering it yourself. Utilising a valid passport number or driving licence Id.

Even without that if you decided to track down these monkeys you could by investigating every other call the caller made. The cost would be enoromous

TylerIE

delancey42 wrote: »

I think the official stance is that they cannot refuse any call but having said that it can depend on the part of the country - a few areas sent an Ambulance on every call no matter how ridiculous while other areas were quite robust in refusing to dispatch on bullsh1t calls. I always thought that a privatised service ( sacrilege to even mention that on this forum ! ) would be very effective at ' diverting/deflecting ' clearly non-emergency calls.

Unfortunately where I worked in the US it was State Law that a call that didnt result in a transport didnt get charged... And essentially everything got a response...

So Medicare / Medicaid (and here our Medical Card Patients) would still call, people who required a plaster (I kid you not) still called, etc... And

Unfortunately it resulted in you discouraging some people from traveling by Ambulance as realistically you knew they couldnt afford it, and ironically occasionally you didnt discourage the plaster brigade (unless they had medicaid) as they got the bill (and therefore at least you felt half like they were "fined" for wasting your time"....

As right-wing as I am, i dunno if privatization would solve the problem of hoax calls!

Bang Bang

Well I'm just back from a call for a person who's had a slight ankle ache which has been ongoing for.... THREE YEARS!! I kid you not, so that's the type of call we get on a regular basis as in every shift.
The call time from control receiving, processing, despatching and finally the ambulance clear and available for the next call was just over one hour.
So that's one emergency ambulance out of the loop for that duration in a very busy area.
The "patient" by the way was admitted directly to the.... waiting room for a long wait.

Shield

Bang Bang wrote: »

The "patient" by the way was admitted directly to the.... waiting room for a long wait.

Love it. I wonder if there's any way Control would ever be allowed to advise people who dial 999 that ambulance arrivals are not given priority over taxi/car/walk-ins unless their condition calls for it?

Delancey

psni wrote: »

Love it. I wonder if there's any way Control would ever be allowed to advise people who dial 999 that ambulance arrivals are not given priority over taxi/car/walk-ins unless their condition calls for it?

In my time I heard several control centres explaining that to callers - amazing how quicky the callers decided to see their GP

Bang Bang

psni wrote: »

Love it. I wonder if there's any way Control would ever be allowed to advise people who dial 999 that ambulance arrivals are not given priority over taxi/car/walk-ins unless their condition calls for it?

The MPDS (Medical Priority Despatch System) grades calls and an "Echo" call is designed to advise the caller to seek assistance from another facility, eg; GP, but the NAS will not, for reasons I'm unsure of, use this facility, so basically everybody gets an ambulance.

Delancey

Bang Bang wrote: »

The MPDS (Medical Priority Despatch System) grades calls and an "Echo" call is designed to advise the caller to seek assistance from another facility, eg; GP, but the NAS will not, for reasons I'm unsure of, use this facility, so basically everybody gets an ambulance.

Interestingly I would say the regions that send out an ambulance to a broken fingernail are those regions that use MPDS , it seems to 'dis-empower ' them . Those areas that are more robust in dealing with nonsense are those that don't ( or didn't ) operate it.Similarly those regions seemed to be far less inclined to dispatch to the ' frequent flyers ' of which every region has to suffer.
Why the echo /Omega code is not used I would love to know - it's continued non-use does lend weight to the 'conspiracy' theories that the Ambulance services will take every call to boost their call-out figures and thus strenghten their case for more funding.

Bang Bang

delancey42 wrote: »

Interestingly I would say the regions that send out an ambulance to a broken fingernail are those regions that use MPDS , it seems to 'dis-empower ' them . Those areas that are more robust in dealing with nonsense are those that don't ( or didn't ) operate it.Similarly those regions seemed to be far less inclined to dispatch to the ' frequent flyers ' of which every region has to suffer.
Why the echo /Omega code is not used I would love to know - it's continued non-use does lend weight to the 'conspiracy' theories that the Ambulance services will take every call to boost their call-out figures and thus strenghten their case for more funding.

Actually it was the Omega call I meant to say.
But I know where you're coming from regarding the non use of it, because on the other hand the same control/management will complain of lack of resources when it hits the fan.

Buffman

From Sky

Police in Sussex have revealed examples of ludicrous emergency calls, including one woman who became so distressed about losing her slippers she dialled 999.

Another phoned up as an unexpected delivery was under way - her gerbil had gone into labour.
Call handlers at Sussex Police expect to deal with life-threatening situations, but have recently had to field calls about smelly drains and an unsatisfactory hotel room.
The examples of time-wasting - which occured between November 2009 and January of this year - have been released by the force to remind people only to call in cases of real emergencies.
A statement from the force said: "Every day, our communications staff can answer up to 1,000 emergency calls from the public: if you dial 999, we'll do everything we can to speak to you within ten seconds but sometimes our operators are faced with calls which don't quite come under the category of 'emergency'.
"Just bear in mind that if your gerbil has gone into labour, you're not sure where your slippers have gone, your drains smell or you don't like your hotel room, you might want to try another route before calling the emergency services."
A spokeswoman for the force told Sky News Online that in some cases the people calling in were physically and mentally vunerable.
Devon and Cornwall police released a similar list in January.
One man phoned up because his Chinese takeway was late, while a woman panicked and called police after she woke up with a duvet around her head.
Other calls to Sussex Police included:

• A regular caller who reads out newspaper articles
• A drunk man asking for a lift home
• Someone asking for the time
• A woman phoning because her pipes had burst
• A man asking for a taxi

Delancey

I read somewhere that about 1/3 of ' Emergency ' calls to the BTP ( British Transport Police ) turn out to be a mixture of train timetable queries and complaints about train punctuality.