Providence, RI exercises common sense

Our previous Director of the state health department convened an Emergency Medical Services working group, consisting mostly of fire chiefs and EMS personnel but also including me as the token academic. It was fun. I would wear the firefighter jacket I inherited from my father.

Anyhow, one of the big issues for EMS is what they call Frequent Fliers. I forget the exact percentage, but the majority of ambulance runs transport a small number of people who ride anywhere from once a month to, seriously, one guy who was transported 235 times in 2014. How can this be, you may ask? Well, a lot of them are incorrigible alcoholics. The problem for EMS is that they had no place to take them but the emergency department. There were legal and financial issues involved, as well as the simple lack of an alternative. As you presumably know, emergency departments are expensive and they have a lot of what drunks don't need and nothing that they do need. They'd just sit there until their blood alcohol went down, get kicked out, and come back a few days later.

So, it required an act of the legislature to do three things: protect EMS from liability for transporting people elsewhere than the ED; allow them to be paid for doing so; and create the place to take the drunks. The place hasn't opened yet but it's under construction. The people will get counseling and other services. Whether that will lead to any of them getting sober is unclear, but it will save the city and state some money and who knows, maybe it will actually help some people.

The strange thing is that it took so long to figure this out, and that most cities still operate as Providence has done until now. We just get stuck doing things the wrong way, it seems.