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Firefighters say they’re swamped by calls for routine care from senior homes

136 points by joveian 5y ago

kyrra 5y ago
https://archive.is/r6kNh https://archive.is/r6kNh
MattGaiser 5y ago
If there is an industry that needs startups, it is long term care and senior care in general. Expensive, nearly universally badly done, and it seems like a lot of people could stay in their homes with some automated appliances/thoughtful redesigns of everyday items. Hoping that when my grandparents start needing it in 5-10 years that the options have dramatically improved.
- Spooky23 5y ago
  No, it’s not a startup industry. Nursing homes cannot be humane and generate the profits needed to be startups. Nursing homes are the end of the road for “medical” related services. They are the last stop for people who nobody wants. Everyone associated with these places is exploited other than the guy who owns it and the custodians who clean and plow.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- burkaman 5y ago
  > A resident needs a bandage changed? An IV line inserted? A catheter replaced? A prescription refilled? This is not stuff that robots can do in the near future.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    First three, no, but why couldn't a robot refill a prescription or at least automatically handle the scheduling for that? And the goal isn't to automate that stuff, but rather automate everything else to free up expensive human hours for this work. So instead of spreading humans thin between cleaning toilets, cleaning floors, doing laundry, and putting in IVs, get the cleaning and laundry off the plate of the human.
    - ryan93 5y ago
      Filling prescriptions needs human supervision and takes very little time relative to other things care facilities do.
  - hellbannedguy 5y ago
    Prescriptions could be filled, and delivered , but doctors love those pricy office visits. (It's a bit better with zoom.)
- Chris2048 5y ago
  > with some automated appliances/thoughtful redesigns Can you give some examples? I guess I can start: something that monitors gas cookers, which already exists: iguardfire.com
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    Sure. I am not talking about large things like chair lifts for stairs but rather small problems that cumulatively could drive a senior out of their home. - Gutters. Being on a roof at 78 is not safe and contracting out gutter cleaning can be expensive. Some way to make gutters easier to empty/make them not require emptying. I imagine a robotic snake that wiggles through, but I am sure the real solution is more mundane. - Small steps. Lots of little steps are casually put into homes. For example, the garage often has a step into the powder room or there is a step between the living room and the kitchen. Yes, you can put a small stool there, but it moves and isn't that stable and is still too high. What I want is a small ramp that they can shuffle up if they need to and is sturdy enough that it won't move and is thin enough at the top to fit under the door. - Food prep. An automated way to stir a pot. Oven trays with easy to grasp sides. Automated peelers/choppers. The tasks which are hard on old hands or require stability. - Social connection. Event info has moved online, but it is hard for them to access. I did a hackathon project on this where it was an Alexa skill for getting event info. Ideally there might be some rideshare integration as well. - Cleaning. I find it crazy that humans still clean virtually every toilet. There has got to be a better way. Toilets are one of the hardest things for them because you have to get down on hands and knees.
  - DeRock 5y ago
    > I guess I can start: something that monitors gas cookers, which already exists: iguardfire.com Induction stoves are the much better option here. They will only heat up ferromagnetic material (i.e. actual pots and pans) and most can sense when nothing is on them and turn off automatically.
    - Chris2048 5y ago
      True, but that's a much bigger purchase I guess, and many ppl would prefer gas if that's what they are used to.
- mooreds 5y ago
  Here's a home sharing company for older/younger pairs that I know of (not affiliated, had a friend work there for a while) https://www.silvernest.com/ https://www.silvernest.com/ Interesting take on it, imo.
  - ErikVandeWater 5y ago
    Silvernest is more of a roommate matching service for old folks. Not so much for pairing young and old.
    - mooreds 5y ago
      Hmmm. I just looked through it and, yes, it appears to be a roommate matching service, irrespective of age. But looks like it is aimed at helping folks age in place: "If you can't swing a forever home and you still want to stay where you are, you may need an alternative source of income. And an increasingly popular one…is home sharing. Silvernest, a home-sharing service for older homeowners that matches them with roommates..." When I first heard about it, I remember being told the focus was on young/old matches, but maybe they pivoted or I misremember.
- nradov 5y ago
  A lot of people do stay in their homes. There is a significant niche industry of building contractors and suppliers for retrofitting homes. Wheelchair ramps, stair lifts, walk-in bathtubs, etc. The real problems come with seniors who need direct hands-on care due to dementia and other serious medical conditions. Remote patient monitoring and smart healthcare devices can help a little, and there are many startups in that space.
- elil17 5y ago
  Sounds like an industry that needs regulation and public sector intervention. If you care and have a lot of money, you can pay for home health aids who will do an excellent job caring for your elderly relatives. The issues is that a good number of people just don't care and take an "out of sight out of mind" approach. A startup can't disrupt this, only regulations which protect elder rights can. Those who do care frequently can't afford it, but a startup can eliminate the costs of caring human interaction, which is the primary thing that elderly people today need more of. The government, however, could help pay for these costs by covering more elder care under Medicare.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- paxys 5y ago
  This is not the kind of problem that can be solved with a fancy app. What the industry needs is proper oversight.
- TrispusAttucks 5y ago
  Capitalism can't save this. This is fundamentally a social decay problem. Modern social behavior sweeps all "unpleasant" grief under the carpet. Out of place out of mind.
  - germinalphrase 5y ago
    There is a sociological argument that this is a core element of what it means to be “civilized”. We displace the responsibility for dirty work on others so that we - the civilized - can maintain the appearance of being clean. For instance, we eat lamb chops, but we don’t carve a lamb at the table.
  - MichaelZuo 5y ago
    I’m fairly certain people of all classes, ranks, and social situations in ancient Mesopotamia, China, India, and Egypt sometimes swept ‘unpleasant’ grief under the carpet too… unless you have some credible reason to believe otherwise?
    - lmm 5y ago
      The proportion of multi-generational homes in modern western cultures is far lower, and the emphasis on taking care of your parents as a sacred social duty is gone. I'm sure that there were plenty of individuals in those historic cultures who fell short of what was expected, but widespread care homes are a relatively recent change.
      - nradov 5y ago
        Those historic cultures had shorter lifespans and essentially forced women to work as unpaid home caregivers. Times have changed.
- LurkingPenguin 5y ago
  > If there is an industry that needs startups, it is long term care and senior care in general. Whatever happened to Soylent?
jldugger 5y ago
My office, pre-pandemic, was situated between the local firehouse and a senior citizen's home. It was very convenient I guess, to watch a fire truck drive across the street to handle an emergency call.
jimmytucson 5y ago
Sounds like we should tax senior homes to fund increased staff for fire departments, basically de-privatizing senior homes...
- GaryTang 5y ago
  Or firefighters can continue doing their job like the rest of us, seeing that they’re some of the highest paid members of our society… I think they’re just bitter they can’t use their lazy man recliners as much as they use to. I for one am glad they are finally experiencing what it’s like to work for any private organization.
  - dls2016 5y ago
    You know there are a lot of places in the US with volunteer fire departments, right?
    - commoner 5y ago
      > NFPA estimates there were an estimated 1,115,000 career and volunteer firefighters in the United States in 2018. Of the total number of firefighters 370,000 (33%) were career firefighters and 745,000 (67%) were volunteer firefighters. https://www.nfpa.org/News-and-Research/Data-research-and-tools/Emergency-Responders/US-fire-department-profile https://www.nfpa.org/News-and-Research/Data-research-and-too...
      - mod 5y ago
        Where I live (quite rural) the entire department is composed of volunteers. The "fire chief" even is a volunteer. We like to say they'll get there just in time to save the foundation.
    - GaryTang 5y ago
      To volunteer implies you are already well off enough to have housing and food, thus have the luxury of being able to donate your time to volunteering.
MisterBastahrd 5y ago
In all my time living in Louisiana, the only time I saw a fire truck near a home was when the house was actually on fire or under threat of fire. In Texas? EVERY SINGLE TIME I see an ambulance, I see a fire truck. It makes ZERO sense most of the time. Texas municipalities are using medical emergencies to fund their fire departments (and jack up insurance rates in the process) by sending fire trucks to people even when they're suffering from chronic conditions.
- windthrown 5y ago
  What you saw in Texas is actually quite common. In most other states I have lived, there are typically many more fire trucks than ambulances available. Because if that, Fire response times are much shorter and as they are are trained parametics, they are used as first-responders when not fighting fires. The situation you described was likely the handoff between fire and ambulance.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  If you have a full time fire department, it makes sense to have them working with EMS rather than just waiting for a fire. If you have a volunteer fire department or part-time fire department, you will call them out only for fires. I would expect in smaller towns that fire departments would not be regularly doing EMS legwork but would focus on fires. But I have no idea if this hypothesis is relevant to your situation. It could also be that the same station has a fire truck and ambulance, and the fireman jump into the ambulance for an EMS call and only use the firetruck for fires.
- wikibob 5y ago
  There is a reason for this. In most municipalities, there aren’t nearly enough fires to keep a fire department busy. So fire departments also are often first responders for medical incidents.
  - bserge 5y ago
    Jesus, can't they just... be on standby? On that note, it would be hilarious if that applied to IT.
sharmin123 5y ago
Internet Dependency on Our Children And Us: Good or Bad?: https://www.hackerslist.co/internet-dependency-on-our-children-and-us-good-or-bad/ https://www.hackerslist.co/internet-dependency-on-our-childr...
john_yaya 5y ago
Senior homes and assisted living centers are a national disgrace. They are entirely about profit maximization (what business isn’t?), and as such hire people at the exact minimum and have well over 100% yearly turnover. The staff commonly steal from residents, and the management do not care. They’d rather retain a larcenous pig who barely executes her duties than have to go back and scrape the barrel for a replacement. The residents are often lonely, in awful health, overlooked by their families, and spend all day watching television. Many of them are verbally abusive towards the staff. Elderly people should live with their families. The ones with no families to care for them should be in nonprofit, closely regulated facilities with well-paid staff. And it’s time to stop spending $500K on medical care just so an 88 year old can make it to 89. Whoever spread that “death panels” meme should be forced to write America a check for five hundred billion dollars.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- disabled 5y ago
  > Whoever spread that “death panels” meme should be forced to write America a check for five hundred billion dollars. Alaska governor and 2008 Republican Vice President candidate Sarah Palin started the “death panels” farse. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_panel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_panel It’s quite disgusting as she is a mother with a disabled child.
  - gruez 5y ago
    >It’s quite disgusting as she is a mother with a disabled child. how is that disgusting? that seems entirely consistent with her beliefs, as disabled child means high costs which potentially could mean getting denied care on the basis of cost. it's not any different than say, "congresswoman with cancer pushes for cancer treatment funding bill".
adventured 5y ago
Boomers have (poorly) outsourced the elder care of their parents. This what you get. Along with the US budget deficits and the national healthcare mess, this is just another thing that generation decided it didn't want to have to deal with (change), so they're kicking the can as far as they can down the road.
- tdeck 5y ago
  I'd love to blame "boomers" for this, but I suspect when my generation's parents grow old we won't be eager to set our professional or personal lives aside to change adult diapers or supervise parents with dementia either. Many elders have serious health problems that we may not be equipped to treat at home. And there have always been people outsourcing care of family members when they could afford it. That's essentially what daycare is for children.
e_commerce 5y ago
Fires are down something like 95% over the last 40 years. Why are firefighters involved in emergency care at all? Firefighters in basically all jurisdictions are just looting municipal budgets. Privatize emergency response.
mberning 5y ago
Our medical system is completely screwed up from a capacity standpoint. I was sick a few weeks ago and called my primary care doc. No appointments for a week. Do an online appointment which is useless and they say I need to be seen. Go to urgent care. 4 hour wait. I figured that was my best option so toughed it out. During my time waiting I saw multiple people come in, talk to the receptionist, and leave in tears when they were told it was a 4+ hour wait. A guy came in with a badly cut finger. I have no idea why you would try an urgent care aside from the fact that you know the ER is gonna take 12+ hours.
- titanomachy 5y ago
  Wow, where is this? Doesn’t match my experience at all (US west coast).
  - threatofrain 5y ago
    LA is like this, but maybe worse.
- Gortal278 5y ago
  Where? This is not anything close to my experience at all.
cepp 5y ago
Back when I worked at $HEALTHCARE_INUSRANCE_CO we were trying to solve this (more general problem) from the other side. We regularly saw routine calls for what could only be described as "loneliness". Our research lead us to find that a high percentage of elderly folks (50+) identified as lonely regardless of their living situation. [1] Looking deeper into claims data, we found a high percentage of these calls were in rural communities. These inessential emergency calls often lead to resources being expended without need. For example: the singular community ambulance being dispatched to the caller's home only because they wanted to chat. Even when considering the dispatcher filtering out these callers, and the emergency personnel doing their best to leave as quickly as possible, it still places a strain on the system. Tying up emergency personnel with mundane tasks creates a far greater risk for the community if & when they're needed. We unfortunately found no solution to this problem. It ran deeper than just alleviating non-emergency emergency-response claims: it was due to the loneliness epidemic, and the company was uncomfortable shouldering the financial and legal cost of trying to create a solution. 1. https://www.aarp.org/personal-growth/transitions/info-09-2010/all_the_lonely_people.html https://www.aarp.org/personal-growth/transitions/info-09-201...
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  > and the company was uncomfortable shouldering the financial and legal cost of trying to create a solution. Did they find a solution before determining that?
- LurkingPenguin 5y ago
  > Our research lead us to find that a high percentage of elderly folks (50+)... People in their 50s are now considered elderly?
  - R0b0t1 5y ago
    50%+, assuming.
- elliekelly 5y ago
  I used to volunteer with an organization that pairs people with lonely “elders”... kind of like a Big Brother/Big Sister program. The woman I was paired with was in her early 60s and went to the doctor constantly but there really wasn’t anything wrong with her. It took me a long time to realize she would go to all these appointments to give her something to do, some people to talk to, and sometimes as an excuse to get her (out of state) kids to talk to her on the phone a bit. I’ll never forget when I was visiting her and realized she was looking forward to an entire day of medical testing appointments. At fist I thought maybe she had Munchausen’s (and maybe, in a way she did) but mostly I think she was just lonely.
mtnGoat 5y ago
Playing devils advocate here but maybe we have too many fire fighters? I have four good friends that work in metropolitan fire houses all making well into the six figures. They constantly joke about how they get paid to do nothing and haven’t been on a fire in years, mainly they respond to calls at old folks homes. Oh and the only work a four or five days a month.
- kube-system 5y ago
  And yet, the majority of the country doesn't have full-time professional firefighters. The majority of firefighters are volunteers who are often working for poorly funded departments.
- germinalphrase 5y ago
  I was with you until that last line. I know two fire fighters; they work a standard 160 a month (though the schedule itself is kind of bonkers).
  - mtnGoat 5y ago
    These guys have to work 40 hours per pay period, which is two 24 hours shifts every two weeks. This is just slightly more than 4 days a month. They will sometimes work four days in a row, the last two days of a period and then the first two of the next and can go 20+days between shifts. 160 hours isn’t much when you are getting paid to sleep, eat and hangout. It’s just 6 days.
- nradov 5y ago
  We need enough reserve firefighting capacity to respond to infrequent major fires. But when they're not fighting fires or training then they might as well respond to other emergencies.
- thepasswordis 5y ago
  Firefighters are a profession that is almost purely a good for society. I wouldn't support a reduction in firefighters until every single other member of the government was gone. In the post apocalypse I hope it is firefighters who are running the provisional government.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
cratermoon 5y ago
Privatizing profits, socializing losses. It's the American Way™.
- mkeedlinger 5y ago
  Your comment could seem like a meaningless sound-bite, but the fact that I can't think of many counter examples makes it hit a bit more.
rootsudo 5y ago
I just don't understand why people aren't thinking of doing this in other countries. You can hire a nurse for $500-1000 in most of South America or Asia - East Europe 50/50, but an au pair for elderly.
- thebiss 5y ago
  You CAN do this in the US, for $1000-$2000 per week.
jollybean 5y ago
Should note that publicly managed institutions may not necessarily be better. We have the most generous support policy here in Quebec, Canada and as a result we have the highest share of elderly living in homes, i.e. because it's easier to put them in there, they end up in there, and they're not necessarily very well managed. I think we might need some basic regulatory policy on this with respect to wages, conditions, protections for residents as well as frankly maybe a different cultural look. We are bad at the later in North America and getting worse - lacking any cultural context as an established basis for these things, and moving ever more away from that, our discussions end up being about legalities and rights as opposed to issues about what is culturally normal. Denmark apparently has a pretty good system for this, homes are small, local i.e. highly communitarian orientation.

136 points by joveian 5y ago

https://archive.is/r6kNh https://archive.is/r6kNh

If there is an industry that needs startups, it is long term care and senior care in general. Expensive, nearly universally badly done, and it seems like a lot of people could stay in their homes with some automated appliances/thoughtful redesigns of everyday items. Hoping that when my grandparents start needing it in 5-10 years that the options have dramatically improved.

Spooky23 5y ago
No, it’s not a startup industry. Nursing homes cannot be humane and generate the profits needed to be startups. Nursing homes are the end of the road for “medical” related services. They are the last stop for people who nobody wants. Everyone associated with these places is exploited other than the guy who owns it and the custodians who clean and plow.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
burkaman 5y ago
> A resident needs a bandage changed? An IV line inserted? A catheter replaced? A prescription refilled? This is not stuff that robots can do in the near future.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  First three, no, but why couldn't a robot refill a prescription or at least automatically handle the scheduling for that? And the goal isn't to automate that stuff, but rather automate everything else to free up expensive human hours for this work. So instead of spreading humans thin between cleaning toilets, cleaning floors, doing laundry, and putting in IVs, get the cleaning and laundry off the plate of the human.
  - ryan93 5y ago
    Filling prescriptions needs human supervision and takes very little time relative to other things care facilities do.
- hellbannedguy 5y ago
  Prescriptions could be filled, and delivered , but doctors love those pricy office visits. (It's a bit better with zoom.)
Chris2048 5y ago
> with some automated appliances/thoughtful redesigns Can you give some examples? I guess I can start: something that monitors gas cookers, which already exists: iguardfire.com
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Sure. I am not talking about large things like chair lifts for stairs but rather small problems that cumulatively could drive a senior out of their home. - Gutters. Being on a roof at 78 is not safe and contracting out gutter cleaning can be expensive. Some way to make gutters easier to empty/make them not require emptying. I imagine a robotic snake that wiggles through, but I am sure the real solution is more mundane. - Small steps. Lots of little steps are casually put into homes. For example, the garage often has a step into the powder room or there is a step between the living room and the kitchen. Yes, you can put a small stool there, but it moves and isn't that stable and is still too high. What I want is a small ramp that they can shuffle up if they need to and is sturdy enough that it won't move and is thin enough at the top to fit under the door. - Food prep. An automated way to stir a pot. Oven trays with easy to grasp sides. Automated peelers/choppers. The tasks which are hard on old hands or require stability. - Social connection. Event info has moved online, but it is hard for them to access. I did a hackathon project on this where it was an Alexa skill for getting event info. Ideally there might be some rideshare integration as well. - Cleaning. I find it crazy that humans still clean virtually every toilet. There has got to be a better way. Toilets are one of the hardest things for them because you have to get down on hands and knees.
- DeRock 5y ago
  > I guess I can start: something that monitors gas cookers, which already exists: iguardfire.com Induction stoves are the much better option here. They will only heat up ferromagnetic material (i.e. actual pots and pans) and most can sense when nothing is on them and turn off automatically.
  - Chris2048 5y ago
    True, but that's a much bigger purchase I guess, and many ppl would prefer gas if that's what they are used to.
mooreds 5y ago
Here's a home sharing company for older/younger pairs that I know of (not affiliated, had a friend work there for a while) https://www.silvernest.com/ https://www.silvernest.com/ Interesting take on it, imo.
- ErikVandeWater 5y ago
  Silvernest is more of a roommate matching service for old folks. Not so much for pairing young and old.
  - mooreds 5y ago
    Hmmm. I just looked through it and, yes, it appears to be a roommate matching service, irrespective of age. But looks like it is aimed at helping folks age in place: "If you can't swing a forever home and you still want to stay where you are, you may need an alternative source of income. And an increasingly popular one…is home sharing. Silvernest, a home-sharing service for older homeowners that matches them with roommates..." When I first heard about it, I remember being told the focus was on young/old matches, but maybe they pivoted or I misremember.
nradov 5y ago
A lot of people do stay in their homes. There is a significant niche industry of building contractors and suppliers for retrofitting homes. Wheelchair ramps, stair lifts, walk-in bathtubs, etc. The real problems come with seniors who need direct hands-on care due to dementia and other serious medical conditions. Remote patient monitoring and smart healthcare devices can help a little, and there are many startups in that space.
elil17 5y ago
Sounds like an industry that needs regulation and public sector intervention. If you care and have a lot of money, you can pay for home health aids who will do an excellent job caring for your elderly relatives. The issues is that a good number of people just don't care and take an "out of sight out of mind" approach. A startup can't disrupt this, only regulations which protect elder rights can. Those who do care frequently can't afford it, but a startup can eliminate the costs of caring human interaction, which is the primary thing that elderly people today need more of. The government, however, could help pay for these costs by covering more elder care under Medicare.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
paxys 5y ago
This is not the kind of problem that can be solved with a fancy app. What the industry needs is proper oversight.
TrispusAttucks 5y ago
Capitalism can't save this. This is fundamentally a social decay problem. Modern social behavior sweeps all "unpleasant" grief under the carpet. Out of place out of mind.
- germinalphrase 5y ago
  There is a sociological argument that this is a core element of what it means to be “civilized”. We displace the responsibility for dirty work on others so that we - the civilized - can maintain the appearance of being clean. For instance, we eat lamb chops, but we don’t carve a lamb at the table.
- MichaelZuo 5y ago
  I’m fairly certain people of all classes, ranks, and social situations in ancient Mesopotamia, China, India, and Egypt sometimes swept ‘unpleasant’ grief under the carpet too… unless you have some credible reason to believe otherwise?
  - lmm 5y ago
    The proportion of multi-generational homes in modern western cultures is far lower, and the emphasis on taking care of your parents as a sacred social duty is gone. I'm sure that there were plenty of individuals in those historic cultures who fell short of what was expected, but widespread care homes are a relatively recent change.
    - nradov 5y ago
      Those historic cultures had shorter lifespans and essentially forced women to work as unpaid home caregivers. Times have changed.
LurkingPenguin 5y ago
> If there is an industry that needs startups, it is long term care and senior care in general. Whatever happened to Soylent?

jldugger 5y ago

My office, pre-pandemic, was situated between the local firehouse and a senior citizen's home. It was very convenient I guess, to watch a fire truck drive across the street to handle an emergency call.

jimmytucson 5y ago

Sounds like we should tax senior homes to fund increased staff for fire departments, basically de-privatizing senior homes...

GaryTang 5y ago
Or firefighters can continue doing their job like the rest of us, seeing that they’re some of the highest paid members of our society… I think they’re just bitter they can’t use their lazy man recliners as much as they use to. I for one am glad they are finally experiencing what it’s like to work for any private organization.
- dls2016 5y ago
  You know there are a lot of places in the US with volunteer fire departments, right?
  - commoner 5y ago
    > NFPA estimates there were an estimated 1,115,000 career and volunteer firefighters in the United States in 2018. Of the total number of firefighters 370,000 (33%) were career firefighters and 745,000 (67%) were volunteer firefighters. https://www.nfpa.org/News-and-Research/Data-research-and-tools/Emergency-Responders/US-fire-department-profile https://www.nfpa.org/News-and-Research/Data-research-and-too...
    - mod 5y ago
      Where I live (quite rural) the entire department is composed of volunteers. The "fire chief" even is a volunteer. We like to say they'll get there just in time to save the foundation.
  - GaryTang 5y ago
    To volunteer implies you are already well off enough to have housing and food, thus have the luxury of being able to donate your time to volunteering.

MisterBastahrd 5y ago

In all my time living in Louisiana, the only time I saw a fire truck near a home was when the house was actually on fire or under threat of fire. In Texas? EVERY SINGLE TIME I see an ambulance, I see a fire truck. It makes ZERO sense most of the time. Texas municipalities are using medical emergencies to fund their fire departments (and jack up insurance rates in the process) by sending fire trucks to people even when they're suffering from chronic conditions.

windthrown 5y ago
What you saw in Texas is actually quite common. In most other states I have lived, there are typically many more fire trucks than ambulances available. Because if that, Fire response times are much shorter and as they are are trained parametics, they are used as first-responders when not fighting fires. The situation you described was likely the handoff between fire and ambulance.
rsj_hn 5y ago
If you have a full time fire department, it makes sense to have them working with EMS rather than just waiting for a fire. If you have a volunteer fire department or part-time fire department, you will call them out only for fires. I would expect in smaller towns that fire departments would not be regularly doing EMS legwork but would focus on fires. But I have no idea if this hypothesis is relevant to your situation. It could also be that the same station has a fire truck and ambulance, and the fireman jump into the ambulance for an EMS call and only use the firetruck for fires.
wikibob 5y ago
There is a reason for this. In most municipalities, there aren’t nearly enough fires to keep a fire department busy. So fire departments also are often first responders for medical incidents.
- bserge 5y ago
  Jesus, can't they just... be on standby? On that note, it would be hilarious if that applied to IT.

sharmin123 5y ago

Internet Dependency on Our Children And Us: Good or Bad?: https://www.hackerslist.co/internet-dependency-on-our-children-and-us-good-or-bad/ https://www.hackerslist.co/internet-dependency-on-our-childr...

john_yaya 5y ago

Senior homes and assisted living centers are a national disgrace. They are entirely about profit maximization (what business isn’t?), and as such hire people at the exact minimum and have well over 100% yearly turnover. The staff commonly steal from residents, and the management do not care. They’d rather retain a larcenous pig who barely executes her duties than have to go back and scrape the barrel for a replacement. The residents are often lonely, in awful health, overlooked by their families, and spend all day watching television. Many of them are verbally abusive towards the staff. Elderly people should live with their families. The ones with no families to care for them should be in nonprofit, closely regulated facilities with well-paid staff. And it’s time to stop spending $500K on medical care just so an 88 year old can make it to 89. Whoever spread that “death panels” meme should be forced to write America a check for five hundred billion dollars.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
disabled 5y ago
> Whoever spread that “death panels” meme should be forced to write America a check for five hundred billion dollars. Alaska governor and 2008 Republican Vice President candidate Sarah Palin started the “death panels” farse. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_panel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_panel It’s quite disgusting as she is a mother with a disabled child.
- gruez 5y ago
  >It’s quite disgusting as she is a mother with a disabled child. how is that disgusting? that seems entirely consistent with her beliefs, as disabled child means high costs which potentially could mean getting denied care on the basis of cost. it's not any different than say, "congresswoman with cancer pushes for cancer treatment funding bill".

adventured 5y ago

Boomers have (poorly) outsourced the elder care of their parents. This what you get. Along with the US budget deficits and the national healthcare mess, this is just another thing that generation decided it didn't want to have to deal with (change), so they're kicking the can as far as they can down the road.

tdeck 5y ago
I'd love to blame "boomers" for this, but I suspect when my generation's parents grow old we won't be eager to set our professional or personal lives aside to change adult diapers or supervise parents with dementia either. Many elders have serious health problems that we may not be equipped to treat at home. And there have always been people outsourcing care of family members when they could afford it. That's essentially what daycare is for children.

e_commerce 5y ago

Fires are down something like 95% over the last 40 years. Why are firefighters involved in emergency care at all? Firefighters in basically all jurisdictions are just looting municipal budgets. Privatize emergency response.

mberning 5y ago

Our medical system is completely screwed up from a capacity standpoint. I was sick a few weeks ago and called my primary care doc. No appointments for a week. Do an online appointment which is useless and they say I need to be seen. Go to urgent care. 4 hour wait. I figured that was my best option so toughed it out. During my time waiting I saw multiple people come in, talk to the receptionist, and leave in tears when they were told it was a 4+ hour wait. A guy came in with a badly cut finger. I have no idea why you would try an urgent care aside from the fact that you know the ER is gonna take 12+ hours.

titanomachy 5y ago
Wow, where is this? Doesn’t match my experience at all (US west coast).
- threatofrain 5y ago
  LA is like this, but maybe worse.
Gortal278 5y ago
Where? This is not anything close to my experience at all.

cepp 5y ago

Back when I worked at $HEALTHCARE_INUSRANCE_CO we were trying to solve this (more general problem) from the other side. We regularly saw routine calls for what could only be described as "loneliness". Our research lead us to find that a high percentage of elderly folks (50+) identified as lonely regardless of their living situation. [1] Looking deeper into claims data, we found a high percentage of these calls were in rural communities. These inessential emergency calls often lead to resources being expended without need. For example: the singular community ambulance being dispatched to the caller's home only because they wanted to chat. Even when considering the dispatcher filtering out these callers, and the emergency personnel doing their best to leave as quickly as possible, it still places a strain on the system. Tying up emergency personnel with mundane tasks creates a far greater risk for the community if & when they're needed. We unfortunately found no solution to this problem. It ran deeper than just alleviating non-emergency emergency-response claims: it was due to the loneliness epidemic, and the company was uncomfortable shouldering the financial and legal cost of trying to create a solution. 1. https://www.aarp.org/personal-growth/transitions/info-09-2010/all_the_lonely_people.html https://www.aarp.org/personal-growth/transitions/info-09-201...

MattGaiser 5y ago
> and the company was uncomfortable shouldering the financial and legal cost of trying to create a solution. Did they find a solution before determining that?
LurkingPenguin 5y ago
> Our research lead us to find that a high percentage of elderly folks (50+)... People in their 50s are now considered elderly?
- R0b0t1 5y ago
  50%+, assuming.
elliekelly 5y ago
I used to volunteer with an organization that pairs people with lonely “elders”... kind of like a Big Brother/Big Sister program. The woman I was paired with was in her early 60s and went to the doctor constantly but there really wasn’t anything wrong with her. It took me a long time to realize she would go to all these appointments to give her something to do, some people to talk to, and sometimes as an excuse to get her (out of state) kids to talk to her on the phone a bit. I’ll never forget when I was visiting her and realized she was looking forward to an entire day of medical testing appointments. At fist I thought maybe she had Munchausen’s (and maybe, in a way she did) but mostly I think she was just lonely.

mtnGoat 5y ago

Playing devils advocate here but maybe we have too many fire fighters? I have four good friends that work in metropolitan fire houses all making well into the six figures. They constantly joke about how they get paid to do nothing and haven’t been on a fire in years, mainly they respond to calls at old folks homes. Oh and the only work a four or five days a month.

kube-system 5y ago
And yet, the majority of the country doesn't have full-time professional firefighters. The majority of firefighters are volunteers who are often working for poorly funded departments.
germinalphrase 5y ago
I was with you until that last line. I know two fire fighters; they work a standard 160 a month (though the schedule itself is kind of bonkers).
- mtnGoat 5y ago
  These guys have to work 40 hours per pay period, which is two 24 hours shifts every two weeks. This is just slightly more than 4 days a month. They will sometimes work four days in a row, the last two days of a period and then the first two of the next and can go 20+days between shifts. 160 hours isn’t much when you are getting paid to sleep, eat and hangout. It’s just 6 days.
nradov 5y ago
We need enough reserve firefighting capacity to respond to infrequent major fires. But when they're not fighting fires or training then they might as well respond to other emergencies.
thepasswordis 5y ago
Firefighters are a profession that is almost purely a good for society. I wouldn't support a reduction in firefighters until every single other member of the government was gone. In the post apocalypse I hope it is firefighters who are running the provisional government.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

cratermoon 5y ago

Privatizing profits, socializing losses. It's the American Way™.

mkeedlinger 5y ago
Your comment could seem like a meaningless sound-bite, but the fact that I can't think of many counter examples makes it hit a bit more.

rootsudo 5y ago

I just don't understand why people aren't thinking of doing this in other countries. You can hire a nurse for $500-1000 in most of South America or Asia - East Europe 50/50, but an au pair for elderly.

thebiss 5y ago
You CAN do this in the US, for $1000-$2000 per week.

jollybean 5y ago

Should note that publicly managed institutions may not necessarily be better. We have the most generous support policy here in Quebec, Canada and as a result we have the highest share of elderly living in homes, i.e. because it's easier to put them in there, they end up in there, and they're not necessarily very well managed. I think we might need some basic regulatory policy on this with respect to wages, conditions, protections for residents as well as frankly maybe a different cultural look. We are bad at the later in North America and getting worse - lacking any cultural context as an established basis for these things, and moving ever more away from that, our discussions end up being about legalities and rights as opposed to issues about what is culturally normal. Denmark apparently has a pretty good system for this, homes are small, local i.e. highly communitarian orientation.