Ambulance rides are notoriously expensive for injured people in the US, guaranteed to cost at least several hundreds of dollars per ride.
Where I'm from, about 5% of the county budget goes specifically towards Fire Services, which in turn fund EMS (EMT and ambulances run out of local fire stations and often get manual help from firefighters. Firefighters even have to be certified on the EMT-Basic level). Where does this county money go, if not funding EMS services so they are accessable for the public?
Looking online, stated costs that make ambulance rides so expensive include cost of ambulance and medicine, cost of training, and cost of salaries. However, these costs don't seem to answer this question fully. Each fire station only ever has about 2-3 ambulances where I'm from, and new ambulances only need to be bought every couple of years. Medicine used by EMS is typically generic and low cost (activated charcoal, oral glucose, etc). Cost of training is minimal; EMTs pay to earn their own degrees and certifications, and the only training the county does is the short acclimation training after hiring that trains on local protocol. And salaries for EMTs are quite low, at an average of $35k (they should probably be paid more).
I've also heard that people can be billed for police services? Police here get another ~5% of the budget, so why does a person need to pay for police services when they use them? Don't we already pay for this also through local tax?
Bonus question: Why are so many ambulances and EMS services now run by private companies?
i'm going through emt training currently, and the skill im working on right now is the patient assessment. when transferring to a hospital or to advanced life support, a quick report detailing the patient is given, and it goes something like "the patient is a 25 year old male/female with some respiratory distress..blah blah blah"
I am asking my instructor this question also but wanted some feedback from the trans community: if a patient is clearly presenting as a gender that does not match biological sex, is it inappropriate to refer to the patient as their biological sex? I want to make the patient comfortable, and help remain calm, but it could have medical implications.
Would it be more appropriate to say something like "the patient is a 25 year old female, he is experiencing respiratory distress"? (for a transman)
Thank you
