Coming soon to an area near you...

Thanks to 9-Echo-1 for bringing this out on his blog today.  Yeah, I shamelessly copied it over here.

We in EMS already know this happens every day in every jurisdiction.  Some feel that if the major healthcare changes are pushed through by Congress, your waiting time to see your doctor will increase.  And as folks get tired of the increased wait time, they'll resort to 911 for "immediate service", which will tie up valuable resources on less-than-life-threatening problems.

911 was created for you to be able to access police, fire, and EMS in emergencies.  Emergencies are, for example, when your house is on fire, when someone is breaking in to your house while you're at home, when someone has a wreck, or if someone in you family has had a heart attack, stroke, quits breathing, is choking, etc.  It is NOT for you to use at 2am when you've grown tired of the two-day-old headache.

In our part of Mississippi, ambulances are fairly rare.  Yes, you town may have two or three units staffed and ready, but at any given time, one or two of them may be on a nursing home transfer, or on a long-distance hospital transfer to Jackson or Memphis.  Dispatchers do a great job at jockeying ambulances around their service area at certain times (based on historical call volume), but we can't be everywhere at once.

I'll stop ranting.  But please, if you have a medical ailment, consider whether it can 1) wait a day or two until you can see you doctor, and 2) if it is truly a life-threatening emergency.