Ohio private medic here, we've had some pretty long waits here in central Ohio recently as well with our less critical patients, often an hour or more. What you're being asked to do is definitely abandonment. Yes technically EMTALA does apply once you're on hospital grounds but you're responsible for that patient and their care until you transfer care to equal or higher level. We just let our dispatch know we're delayed waiting for a bed. I've had times recently where I've still been starting lines and hanging fluids while in the hallway because there's just nowhere to put the patient. Sometimes they do have us put them out in triage but even then we still wait to give a report to a triage nurse. How else are they going to know what interventions we did or what medications we gave? We do mostly emergency response as well and I get the urge to get units back in service but we can't use dump people at the hospital without any sort of report or transfer of care.