Ring Emergency..."Your call has been placed in a queue".

What a joke!

EMERGENCY patients dialling 000 will be diagnosed by a computer program that could leave them waiting up to an hour for an ambulance.
People suffering complaints such as chest pains, miscarriages or drug overdoses will be assessed as either "hot", meaning an ambulance will be dispatched immediately, or "cold", with response times of 30 minutes.

And sexual assault victims face the chilling prospect of waiting up to twice as long for medical care - unless they are suffering life-threatening injuries.

The new over-the-phone diagnosis system will see up to 40 per cent of emergency calls responded to without lights and sirens - adding to the Code Red crisis it was designed to help alleviate.

The Health Services Union said the system, called ProQA and due to be in place by the end of the month, would further delay ambulances and in some cases it would be quicker to drive yourself to hospital.

Source

How is a voice recognition or button system going to be able to help someone who can't speak or go through the "please press #4" routine if they are unable too?
Oh, and i love this quote from ProQA

Reduces human error and, as a result, the risk of liability to the center

Sanc'.

Interesting quesiton. I wonder if they'll have a different system.

There was a news story here about a year ago concerning a woman who was saved by her trained dog (dog dialed the number on a special pad to summon help and let the rescuers in when they came to the door.) I don't see training a dog to go through that kind of system.

Or what about a young child?

It's like having your relative countries emergency number on 'speed dial'...to be analysed by a computer.

"Arrghh...need help"...clunk.

Sorry, but this system won't work.

Sanc'.

i would'nt go for the phone line for patients who can speak .. a fast intranet maybe would be better, phone in case the electricity is shut down or the patient cant type but true that in case the patient cant type or speak yr fuct

Oh lord... I can see it now "Thank you for calling metro emergency services all agents are currently busy, In the future for quicker service you can try having an emergency during off peak hours"

If that's not bad enough already, many large cities are plagued with overflowing ERs that simply can't take more patients...Some are there with legit causes, but most are there b/c they sneezed too hard and wanted to make sure that was okay.....Well, that's a bit sarcastic, but I think we all are familiar with the "I'll just go to the ER" solution some people have....

At any rate, once you've gotten through this obscure voice memory operator, there you are, bleeding to death or what have you in the ambulance...and when the driver calls the ER saying "We're bringing patient x" in, they say "Nope, you're going to have to drive an extra 45 minutes to the next ER - we're full"....Who's just as likely to say the same thing again.....

[edit on 4/7/2005 by EnronOutrunHomerun]

i think it may already be happening here. we have a syston that offers to (for a fee) tell you when a number is free.

i stopped to help a lady on the highway with a flat tire. the first thing she said was "listen to this i called 911 and the line is busy i got he message to let me know when the becomes free". ok no way in hell she should be calling 911 for a friggen flat tire, but how come 911 was busy. great someone haveing a heart attack may have one try if the line is busy they are dead.

then we have the er overfilling problem. abulance re-dirrects have been becomeing commonplace the last couple of years. my ex gf is an ambulance dispacher, she often complains about hospitals claiming they are over full, she has had problems at times finding any hospital that do have er room. gee got to love healthcare cutbacks.

Originally posted by drogo

i stopped to help a lady on the highway with a flat tire. the first thing she said was "listen to this i called 911 and the line is busy i got he message to let me know when the becomes free". ok no way in hell she should be calling 911 for a friggen flat tire, but how come 911 was busy. great someone haveing a heart attack may have one try if the line is busy they are dead.

surely because there's people calling for a flat tire or something