Idle Observations From The Bolance

Wouldn't it be nice if response times were like cellular rollover minutes?

"Yeah, boss, I know it took us three hours to get to Frankie Frequent Flier's chronic gout pain, but you see, there was a Mel Brooks movie marathon on AMC, and we had a dispatch-to-balloon time of 34 minutes on that acute myocardial infarction last week. So we're good, right?"

It would take a better dispatch and triage system than might as well just flip a coin MPDS, but if we could come up with some realistic response time standards for the truly time-sensitive emergencies, we could provide quality EMS with half the staff at twice the salary, and subcontract out all the Alpha and Omega calls to the local cable company's call center:

"What's that, Sir? You've been bitten by a brown recluse spider? Hold one moment, Sir, your call is important to us… [insert eleven minutes of Barry Manilow and Neil Sedaka music]… Sir, are you still on the line? Looks like we can get a BLS ambulance to you next Tuesday, between the hours of noon and 5:00 pm."

When my legion of flying monkeys completes my quest for world domination, that's the way we're gonna do it.