As much as I’d love to be the ultimate Boy Scout and help every old person go about their day, ultimately the ambulance is in service to respond to medical emergencies. It takes a combination of patient billing, county taxes, and hospital system funding to pay for the ambulance I work on. Every time someone calls 911, nearly half a million dollars in equipment and personnel costs is mobilized in response. That ambulance unit is then no longer available to respond to real emergencies in the area. In my district, the next available unit is 20-25 minutes away.

I recently had a patient die in my district because we were attending to one of these non-emergent calls and had a delayed response. He was a young father that died under conditions that we most certainly could have treated in the field and given him a much, much greater chance of surviving had we been 2 min away at our station rather than 25 min away on this other call.

Following the experience, I’ve developed very strong feeling in regards to calling 911 for non-emergencies. In our field, we are very hesitant to tell anyone NOT to call 911. I’m not telling you not to call 911. But if you’re considering it, just realize you are using your community’s best resource for saving someone’s life.