I agree the system as a whole is broken. We get times where there's a mountain or remote rescue requiring our helo and/or hoist. Once one of our rescue tech/EMTs are lowered, myself or one of our others in our office, get the patient basically stable on the ground and packaged in the stokes for the hoist; most often we meet up in a parking lot, road, LX etc, to transload with either a ground ambo if non critical, or a civil helo if critical. Works great when the timing works out.
However, it's happened more than a few times where Lifenet/Air Evac/whomever has been called and has a fairly long ETA. In one case we had the rescue complete and would be at the transload point in about 5 mins. Lifenet helo was 20+ minutes out. We could just complete the transport to the hospital and be on final approach in the time it took Lifenet to get to the transload point, but were told no, land at the transload point and await the Lifenet helo. So, we land, and I/we end up doing extended patient care in the back of our helo sitting at idle on the ground, waiting on Lifenet to get there to transfer, when the whole thing could've been completed much quicker and patient care wouldn't have been diminished.......certainly not any more than it was sitting on the ground in our helo treating the patient instead of transporting.
Why couldn't we transport? Because if we did, then Lifenet or whomever would whine/bitch/complain that we were taking business from them, since they weren't able to charge their $40,000 for a 20 mile flight. Now, I'm not saying that we should regularly transport patients because that's not our normal job (and I agree we shouldn't be normally be competing with private business), but in an exigent circumstance such as this that has happened a good few times, we end up sacrificing patient care, all for someone else's profit.
Last I checked, we did what was best for the patient.
Or do we?
