Small town armed robbery!

I just heard over the scanner there's been an armed robbery of our local pharmacy. Our local police have issued a BOLO for the guy. Whoever the guy is, he must not be very smart since they've got a good description of him and of his pickup.

We had a bad wreck last Tuesday. One of our local 20 year olds was speeding on his motorcycle on a residential street and hit a pickup. The guy ended up with his bike on top of him underneath the truck. He was taken to our regional hospital which is 12 miles away from my town and then medi-vac'd to Oklahoma City.

I mention this because I don't understand why he couldn't be treated at our regional hospital. It seems to me as if alot of time was lost that could have been used to better treat his injuries.

Our regional hospital isn't a small hospital, it's not huge but it's not small either. It services the whole county as the only hospital. There are also quite a number of physicians in my town and in the town where the hospital is. We do have some specialists too; cardiologists, dermatologist, an oncologist, surgeons and others.

Does anyone know what it takes for a hospital to be qualified as a hospital that can handle severe injuries? How could I become an activist to change the current procedure of medi-vacing to OKC?

is that certain Trauma Centers are more advanced than others in specific types of injuries because of either staff or equipment. That' s why there are transfers.

On the subject of the robbery: In most small towns there is a small cadre of "bad actors" and the police usually have a pretty good handle on them.

brain damage or spine damage, so they needed to send him off somewhere more advanced. Or perhaps some amazing bone damage, and there is a known specialist somewhere else who is really good at handling it. Or something stuck in his heart, whcih someone else is more qualified to take out. Could be many things.

No matter how well funded the hospital, or how advanced the staff, no hospital can be the best at handling every kind of trauma (except perhaps Mayo Clinic). So even an excellent hospital like NYU Medical Center, which gets a lot of medi-cav'd people, also sometimes has to medi-vac off to other hospitals.

All depends on what's happening with the person in question and the skills and equipment represented at the hospital.

but in this case the young man was at the regional hospital for a grand total of 15 minutes.

It just seems as if so much time was wasted in getting him to a hospital that could treat him.

5 minutes for police to get to scene
5 minutes later ambulance arrived
20 minutes for ambulance transport to regional hospital
15 minutes at regional hospital
30 minutes for medivac to OKC and that doesn't count waiting on the helicopter to arrive at our regional hospital.

Why not have ambulance personnel trained to where medivac could pick up from the scene instead of wasting all of that transport time?



As far as the armed robbery goes, it doesn't sound as if it's one of the local bad guys. Probably an out of towner who wasn't after money but after drugs.

and not until they had his clothes cut off and started xrays and digging around, then realized that he was hurt worse than they thought.

My brother-in-law was in a motorcycle wreck in Houston and he was medivac'd from the scene. At first they thought he was in critical condition with multiple injuries but it turned out he had a minor concusion and about 300 fire ant bites.

So, if you had the local ambulance service or maybe even the police semi trained as a paramedic couldn't an onsite assessment take place which would cut down the time medivac is called in?

I don't know where to go to ask these questions so I'm starting here. My ex-sister-in-law is president of the local chamber of commerce so if I was to start something she'd be ideal for me to start with. Before I start anything though I thought I'd throw it out here.

Which there might not be - you have two examples you are working with, one in which the person was determined to need medi-vaccing from the scene, and another in which the patient wasn't medi-vacced until he got to the first hospital.

Before going any further, you should get data as to how many people are medi-vacced from the scene, and how many wait until they get to the hospital.

Perhaps it's rare that a medi-vac needing situation isn't pegged right away at the scene, in which case everything is okay. No one's perfect, so some thigns are always gonna slip through, and I'm sure there are situations in which no one knows until the person gets to the hospital and they start digging around.

So perhaps the ambulance are already trained to make a determination. And with all the training and other things police have to have, is it really worth also making them learn paramedic stuff?

Perhaps you could call the local hospital, and start your question asking there - ask them how they determine whether to medi-vac or not.

That's where your answer lies.

(I don't think the chamber of commerce would have any idea)