I don’t have a problem with EMS, Fire or even Police billing services rendered at a emergency scene. Where it gets tricky is when to bill.  These days I’m sure every car accident generates a dozen 911 calls.  One of the things dispatch will try to determine is if there are any injuries.  In most jurisdictions the dispatcher can limit the response if it appears from all the information in hand that the accident is minor (no injuries) and not blocking traffic.

Many times that information cannot be determined causing the dispatcher to send Police, Fire and EMS.  Once dispatched the accident victims are responsible for services provided that they didn’t call for or need. In this case a “Good Samaritan” in the role of First Responder apparently popped the windshield allowing a father and three kids to escape from an overturned minivan. In a rollover accident, it seems like everybody get cut from flying glass, even after the glass stops flying.  The vast majority of these cuts don’t amount to a boo-boo.  

I hate to sound like a broken record but, when I was working car accidents I was happy to accept “dumb help” whenever I could.  In fact I had a cadre of helpers who seemed to show up at my accident scenes.  I am not disparaging these volunteers by calling them dumb help, their value was that they worked under the direct supervision of a paramedic or cop and did as they were told. They just happened to have a flash light or work gloves.  They were happy to function as combination light tower and portable IV pole.  They would tug on a door or fetch equipment on command.  In short they were a force multiplier.

When the event was all over they got to clean up with the cops and the paramedics.  The paramedics would break out the hand cleaner and give everybody the verbal once over.  It was not unusual to pick up a boo-boo at these scenes and a once over by the paramedic was a reassurance not treatment.

The villain in this story, isn’t the paramedic who wrote up treatment form, it isn’t the person in the billing office.  The villain is the bureaucrat who decided that paramedics didn’t have the ability to make an informed judgment, in the field. This distrust led to a policy that attempted to cover every eventuality and like such efforts always do, failed.

The district spokesman makes it sound like the Good Samaritan will have the debt forgiven if he will just appeal.  If that is the case, why generate the bill in the first place.  A paramedic’s decision not to bill would have eliminated all that followed.  Put another way, the district has given that paramedic team an ambulance and equipment worth $250,000 and the power of life and death, what’s a measly $143?