4 ms·
It is more honest to keep the comparison either between absolute numbers or percentages: 7% of emergency calls made by 0.16% of people 4,288 of 62,763 emergen
by CamTin 9y ago
It is more honest to keep the comparison either between absolute numbers or percentages:
7% of emergency calls made by 0.16% of people
4,288 of 62,763 emergency calls made by 100 people
- wheelerwj 9y agoits not more or less dishonest, they are the exact same numbers
- Willson50 9y agoThe original title does not give information on the total number of people, only the 100.
- wheelerwj 9y agothe number of people are irrelevant, 100 people making 4000+ calls to emergency services is outstanding regardless of the size of the population or the time period.
- wolco 9y agoThat's 40 calls a year about once a week. If those are homes with many seniors that might not be too shocking. Big malls might have a call a week or concert arenas.
- teeray 9y agoTo further illustrate: On average that's about 44 calls per person, or a 911 call made by one of those 100 people every week or sometimes two, given that these numbers were over the course of a year.
- jellicle 9y agoI have a friend dying of congestive heart failure. He'll be dead within a year. But in the meantime, he calls 911 a lot. Not sure what the solution is supposed to be here. A lot of these calls are perfectly legitimate and not the result of anyone "abusing" the system. Some people have more medical problems than others.
- debacle 9y agoPerhaps there needs to be a different solution for these kinds of people. There's probably a way of addressing your friend's needs more effectively and also not taking up dispatcher time.
- ams6110 9y agoYes, 911 should be for emergencies i.e. unexpected, unplanned critical events. Somebody with a chronic condition should have either regular home visits or be in a care facility.
- icebraining 9y agoIt's still unplanned, since you don't know when it's going to happen; a home visit might leave 10 minutes before you need help. As for care facilities, if the need isn't that common (e.g. once a week), is that really more effective than an occasional ambulance trip? Plus the patient might very well prefer to spend his last year as close to his family as possible.
- ams6110 9y agoI think the cost could well be close. Here, if you call 911 for a medical emergency you will get a police patrol car, an ambulance, and a fire truck dispatched in most cases. That's at least three vehicles and at least half a dozen people. If this is happening once a week then it really seems there ought to be a better way to handle it. Edit: if you also assume that an ambulance dispatch is usually followed by an ER trip, the cost balloons even more. Seems really hard to think that a 911 dispatch followed by an ER trip once a week is the best way to handle a chronically ill person at home.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- proto-n 9y agoHow did you get 1.6%?
- cma 9y agoDoes it include things like head of a shopping mall calling for emergencies with customers?
- jws 9y agoI think you might have a decimal off. 100/62763 = .0016 = 0.16%
- CamTin 9y agoYou're correct, of course. Updated and fixed.
- Hupriene 9y agoSince the population of Milwaukee is around 600k, that should be 0.016% of people. Or you should say something like 'of people who made emergency calls' edit: that second one is still problematic since we only a couple data points on the distribution of calls per capita.