I'm new to the community of monitoring emergency operations. While I've gotten down to the basics, I'm still left with questions. How,if anyway, do ambulances communicate with the receiving hospital? Is it like I've seen in ER, "We've got a gunshot victim with a sucking chest wound en route!", or is it just arrive and go from there? Also, does anyone know of a set terminology that is used by Harford County Fire/EMS, such as " Company 4,10-99 a driver,code 3"? Any information would be great. Thanks.
There are a number of systems in the State of Maryland for EMS-to-hospital communication. All such communications in the Central part of the state are handled by the Emergency Medical Resource Center (EMRC), which is operated by the MD Institute for Emergency Medical Services Systems in downtown Baltimore, and is located in the same dispatch room as SYSCOM, the state's helicopter dispatch service.
An EMS unit contacts EMRC by one of the three following mediums:
1.
State-Wide UHF EMS Radio system
2. Individual county's trunked radio system talk group assigned to call EMRC
3. EMRC consult line (1-800-492-3805)
The EMS unit notifies EMRC of which receiving facility(ies) they need to consult with, and EMRC directs them to the appropriate channel or talk group, which is patched to the hospital's remote base station.
As far as your question about Harford County, it means this:
Company 4 (Abingdon VFC),
10-99 a driver (ambulance driver still needed for the call -- possibly derived from the standard ten-codes where 10-99 means
wanted, this could also be heard as "10-99 a paramedic" or "10-99 an IV tech"),
code-3 (this is the last opportunity for a driver to be obtains -- in less than a minute, the next due ambulance will be dispatched).
Other than these few oddities, Harford County fire dispatch uses mostly plain English:
10-50PI (vehicle accident with personal injury)
10-50PI Rescue (above with entrapment -- extrication response needed)
Alarm of Fire (fire seen by caller, unknown what is burning -- often confused with "automatic alarm" by those who don't know better)
