Long transfer wait times can be the difference between life and death.
Officials with the Baptist Medical Center Attala addressed concerns of multi-hour wait times for some of its critical condition patients with the Attala County Board of Supervisors Monday morning.
“We have become very concerned with this issue and frankly correcting it is totally out of our control,” Baptist Attala CEO John Dawson told the board. “Some patients and families are understanding, but some are just outright outraged with the delays in transfer and there is nothing we can say.”
Attala County currently has a contract with MedStat EMS to provide the county with ambulance services. Currently only two EMS trucks are in the county with one designated only for 911 calls and the other for transfers and posting to other counties.
“We understand that we are not talking to the people causing the problems,” said Dr. Brady Richardson, ER director for Baptist Attala. “We have gone to the ambulance service and it’s just one excuse after another.”
Richardson told the supervisors about an elderly patient that had fallen and hit her head causing an intracerebral hemorrhage (brain bleed).
“I instructed my nurse to call MedStat and we were told they would be there in 15 minutes, but it ended up being nearly an hour and a half after the service responded to a simple sickness report at the nursing center first.”
He also stated that there was a recent case where a long transport time was a cause of a patient’s death.
“The ambulance service will show you averages and they don’t look that bad, but how they respond on busier days is the real problem,” Richardson added. When it is your momma or your daddy averages don’t mean anything, it’s all about how quick can we get the transfer. Having to send a critical condition patient on the road in a personal car can easily become a death case.”
Dawson and Richardson asked the supervisors to go to the ambulance service and see what the problem is and find out if there is a way to fix it.
“When a neighboring county needs a posted truck at the county line, we can no longer transfer anyone until those trucks come back home,” Richardson added. “It is the life and safety of some of these patients and there needs to be some sort of responsibility on their (MedStat) part.”
The supervisors and hospital officials suggested that another truck may need to be added along with forcing MedStat to send a transfer request to AMR (American Medical Response) out of Jackson.
“I don’t know the financial situations behind a new truck,” Richardson added. “There will be days where people think it is a waste, but we have to be prepared for the worst days.”
Richardson also pointed out that Attala County has a huge V.A. nursing home and that every patient that is transferred out of it, along with those from local nursing homes, is by ambulance.
“I think they need to put something in place,” said Kary Ellington, District four supervisor. “They spend a lot of time transferring from the VA in Jackson to the nursing home, but they need something there to be available for hospital at all times.”
The board asked for the hospital to present dates and times of response time to them, before they go any further into the matter.
In other business, county engineer Christian Gardner informed the supervisors that work has begun on the counties three state aid projects. Garner stated that the first project is underway with the second hopefully starting by the first of the year.
The supervisors also:
• took four bids for a new dump truck with a build in buy-back under advisement;
• approved a payment of $48,421.86 to Gardner Engineering.
The next scheduled meeting of the Attala County Board of Supervisors will be Dec. 19.
