Ambulance To Hospital Voice

[pmstewart]

I've been perplexed by the lack of activity on tg's for Ogden Regional Hospital and McKay Dee Hospital in my area. Especially when there are multiple ambulances out and headed to the hospital.

This morning Ambulance 5 made a mistake which absolutely floored me. In the first conversation I've heard in months from an ambulance to a hospital they were calling on the wrong channel.

Ambulance 5 called in on tg 16480 which they were told by the hospital was the Morgan / Life Flight channel and because they were on the wrong channel it was harder for the hospital to hear them. They immediately changed channels and I lost their voice transmission.

One of the things I cannot figure out is how Ambulances and Life Flight / Air Med are contacting the hospital with patient info because it's not coming over the currently programmed tg's.

Can anyone help enlighten those of us in the dark??

Paul

 

[W2NJS]

They might still be using what are called "Med Channels" which are analog UHF, in which case they'd have two radios in the truck, the trunked unit you mentioned and the UHF analog unit. And, unlikely as it seems, they could have a VHF radio that uses the old 155.340 analog channel. Get a look at the antennas they're using; that will tell you something about what's actually in use.

 

[pmstewart]

I have an older scanner set to listen to 155.340 which is the old "HEAR" system for Utah....nothing

The antenna's on the ambulances (most of them 2) are the short 800MHz ones.....

 

[Observer1]

I've been perplexed by the lack of activity on tg's for Ogden Regional Hospital and McKay Dee Hospital in my area. Especially when there are multiple ambulances out and headed to the hospital.

This morning Ambulance 5 made a mistake which absolutely floored me. In the first conversation I've heard in months from an ambulance to a hospital they were calling on the wrong channel.

Ambulance 5 called in on tg 16480 which they were told by the hospital was the Morgan / Life Flight channel and because they were on the wrong channel it was harder for the hospital to hear them. They immediately changed channels and I lost their voice transmission.

One of the things I cannot figure out is how Ambulances and Life Flight / Air Med are contacting the hospital with patient info because it's not coming over the currently programmed tg's.

Can anyone help enlighten those of us in the dark??

Paul

They use cell phones

 

[scat]

I think they also send a lot of info over the MDT units. Before the new dispatch sytem, you could hear medical info on fire 2 & 3.

Scot

 

[enosjones]

Due to HIPPA Regulations "MOST" of the Ambulance to Hospital talk is not heard. they stopped using 155.280 a few years ago ive only heard it twice since they rely on cell phone or in airmed and lifeflights case encryted transmissions to talk to the hospitals...

 

[pmstewart]

Scat,

What your basically saying is the ambulance, along with possibly having two sets of radios may have two computers as well....one in the cab for the driver and another in the coach for the EMT's to use?

I have looked at most of the ambulances in our area and they seem to have two 800MHz style short wire antenna's mounted to the roof. Some also have the can type antenna's mounted in the front hood openings .....none with antenna's large enough to be 155 or 400 MHz.....What I have discovered by trial and error seems to be this.....if the rig has the 800MHz dual can antenna then the officer/car has an MDT plugged into the radio system. Those who are using the old wire style antenna's are simply radios without the MDT stuff wired in.......The other thing I've kind of picked up on is County Deputies and fire/ems out in areas where the simulcast won't reach are the one's who don't have MDT's in their rigs....I'm sure it has to do with bandwidth issues where there is limited coverage for radios much less computers.

I know there was medica voice traffic a couple of years ago when I got my PRO-107....but now it appears the age of MDT's has really changes the face of our hobby.....I never know where anyone but medical is going most of the time because all the officers are dispatched by MDT with incident numbers or by cell phone.....its certainly taken most of the fun of my hobby away .....thats why my scanners have been in a box collecting dust for a couple of years......

Enos, HIPPA Sucks IMHO! I know it's purpose and in theory it works good for some stuff but the public has a right to know about some things. Law enforcement should be held a little less accountable under HIPPA as they deal with alot of sensitive public info.....

And since the founders of our UCAN system seem to be extra paranoid it appears HIPPA would provide us more info than we get under UCAN......LOL (UCANot!)

Observer1, thanx for weighing in .....but we cannot listen to cell phone conversations......how about something helpful??????!!!!! LOL

 

[Observer1]

Most MDT's are being switched to air cards, especially in EMS functions. They just have a single laptop they can move it from the front, to the back or take it inside a house or the hospital.

As for your assertion that the public has a right to information, I disagree. A persons medical issues should not be made public. And HIPPA makes that very clear. As someone who used to work in a hospital you don't mess with HIPPA.

I know in Salt Lake the paramedics contact the hospital via cell phone to give them a report prior to transport or prior to declaring someone deceased. They have MDT's with air cards, but their communication is done via phone to avoid any HIPPA problems.

 

[N2JDS]

HIPPA has no power over a patient radio report. Reports did not disappear from radios because of this, it disappeared because cell phones are cheap and easier to talk on.There isn't much more discussed in the report that was not heard in the initial dispatch of a call. As a matter of fact. A patient report has less identifying information. As we give reports over the radio, (which I never do any more as we do use cell phones) we do not give names, DOB or any other identifying facts to link a report to a single person. A listener has a better chance of getting information as to who it is by listening to the police running their names when PD responds to a call. Secondly, helicopters still use radio reports as Cell phone usage is not used in flight.

 

[ww7y]

They use cell phones

Yep cell phones almost exclusivly....we can even send 12 lead EKGs by cell. Secondary would be the Hospital channels on UCAN, but only when we can't get cell coverage.

 

[pmstewart]

This is why I quit monitoring in the first place because all the on air information we used to be able to monitor has completely gone away. With the invent of HIPPA, MDT's, CAD, TRUNK, TSYS, TGID and any other acronym I can come up with all we hear now is fire dispatch. Its an awfully expensive hobby to simply be able to listen to a computerized voice dispatching ambulances and fire engines and rescue units. Whats worse is the rescue trucks and ambulances are frequently reassigned to different stations so we never really know where they are coming from. I'm sure this comes from simple equipment maintenance or the like but it is still baffling.

I started the process of getting back into a hobby I absolutely loved and lost all interest completely when the Olympics came to Utah because it was just too difficult to follow information anymore. Even the most expensive trunking scanners (which I purchased 3 - new antenna's - the works!) could not take the pieces and reassemble them in ways one could follow. What's the acronym for the engineers purposefully make it difficult? PITA?

I was hoping the newer generation of scanners would get rid of all the unwanted birdies, false frequency stops, crackling voices and give back some of the stuff which has gone digital. All I keep running into is computer dispatched fire engines going to "zulu response seizure" or "bravo response smell of gas/propan" on streets which are not pronounced in any understandable form...... I'm not trying to be antagonistic but the simple flow of info used to be dispatcher receives call - responsible unit receives call from dispatch - responsible unit relays info to dispatch / hospital / wrecker / coroner - responsible unit clears......Inside of this flow may have been sensitive personal info which criminals may have used which violates ethics I agree....but most of the time unless the communications were 27/28/29 checks we never heard overly sensitive info. This has been taken care of somewhat by the advent of "Service" channels.....some which are encrypted and others where personal info is kept a heavily guarded shrine.....

What is fun and exciting in this hobby anymore? It all looks like work to me! Following new talkgroups because the old ones have changed and checking to see what new site they've come up with to extend their coverage of things we cannot hear. Or how about they've added a new SWAT channel because scanner enthusiasts have now found out our old one and they are a bunch of thugs - we cant have that now can we......

My last rant would go something like this .....The State of Utah devised an Public Safety Dispatch code system where each county used an alphabetical character to identify their county. In Weber it's "F" in Davis its "G" . Within each county they came up with an incantation of some 1F, 2F, 6FA callsign identifier.....it was easy to follow once you got the hang of it. Now all the counties are run to together on the same frequencies and all dispatch fire by station xx, or ambulance x, or no prefix at all just a number. How are we supposed to differentiate between them? I thought the new radio system was supposed to help make things better but I don't see much better for the scanning enthusiast.....

Your comments are greatly appreciated since I'm ready to send the $800.00 worth of brand new xmas gifts back to the store! and box up everytihing else and donate it to the recycle pile!

Paul

 

[radioman2001]

Well I guess the government won one they got one person to give up listening. Eventually it's going to be that way all over the U.S. and this hobby WILL die, whether we like it or not. (Just like guns) While all of our communications will be monitored and tracable, since all private radios will be no longer, and we won't be able to keep track of our employees, the government just like most other countries in the world. Welcome to 1984, just a few years late.

 

[kf7yn]

Donate it my way! Your Pro-2052 and 2066 would make a dandy Trunker pair. I think you are trying to accomplish too much, too fast, and you need to get that outside antenna up like we talked about.

I am the opposite of frustrated, having so much on a common system is a blessing. What I used to try to hear with a tower, yagi and rotator for is now accessable with an omni 800 MHz antenna. I could never hear what was going on in Cache, Box Elder, Tooele, etc. now it's easy.

Think about it this way, just being able to hear 10X more than before it all went trunked just means there is more to learn. What if the State of Utah had not gone to a county radio call number system? Keeping track would be immensely harder. Even though not all agencies use the state numbers, many do and it is nice knowing 3F is Roy, 2G is Bountiful and 9J is Payson. Being able to hear those from SL Co is awesome. Secondary concern to me is what sub-area that callsign is assigned to, knowing it is Weber County is more important to me. Be patient, ask questions, some of it comes by taking notes while scanning.

Again, I suggest you llimit your area of interest until you have it figured out to your satisfaction then spread out a little more, like concentric circles. You won't be able to monitor it all, as you have discovered with the ambulance to hospital issue. To me that's small fry, there is far more that CAN be had than cannot so that's what I concentrate on. I guess it all depends on what one's perspective is, but that's mine.

It has taken this group years to figure out what we know. Be persistent and hang in there....

 

[tyler1653]

It has been a few months since I've tried...but I am fairly certain that you can still listen to Airmed patient reports, as they are not (or weren't when I was last listening in) encrypted. Lifeflight is, of course, a different story.

 

[pmstewart]

Jon,

Patience is not my thing that's why I never became a doctor. But this weeks victory was getting the 2066 and the 2052 UniTrunked and last night I was successful. Got the discriminator port in the 2066 connected to the laptop and voice'd out to 2052 thru rs-232.....

That is the only winner in a few weeks. There is another member from Ogden who sent me his p500 and I got some really useful suggestions from it....

Maybe things will look better tomorrow we'll have to see......thanks for your reply's and suggestions and Jon I'll keep you in mind.....LOL

 

[Hooligan]

"Boo-hoo, I don't get to learn detailed information about some 78 year old woman's rectal bleeding any more -- it's yet another example of the jack-booted government thugs eroding my freedom, and maybe I'm gonna get rid of my scanners because the only thing left to hear are the NWS broadcasts! I don't care about privacy or convenience -- I demand EMTs start passing patient info to hospital ERs via non-secure, VHF repeaters so that I may be entertained, here deep below the rock I live under!"


Speaking of emergency medical service, someone in Ogden needs an increased dosage of their meds dropped off in a hurry...

**********
Down here in Washington County, I've assumed they use PCS as the RF link for voice or MDC patient reports, but on very rare occasions I've caught them on 155.280 talking to the DRMC.

Also, I believe it's once a month that someone (State EOC or EMS Authority?) radio-checks all of the major hospitals on UCAN. It's repeated here on the SW Utah UCAN sites, though the hospitals seem to have all been up in the Northern part of the state.

Around a year ago on 463.125/136.5Hz (National MED-6 channel) I did copy HEAR type traffic, possibly from a medevac helo in AZ or NV. LIfeflight used their encrypted TGs, and/or their satphones.

 

[ScanWV]

HIPPA has nothing to do with not able to hear radio reports anymore. You can give a radio report as detailed as you want as long as you dont give a name over the radio. alot of places still use med channels to give patient reports. I work for two different agencies that use two different hospitals. One hospital all patient reports come in on phone with a med channel as a back up. And the other uses multiple med channels and phone as a back up.

 

[krokus]

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.973 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/105)

pmstewart - it sounds like you need a bit of programming assistance. It sounds like you are spending a lot of time searching for things, rather than scanning known systems/frequencies.

If you are picking up so many birdies, that tells me you are spending a lot of time doing spectrum sweeps, which are a lot of work, for little return. The efficiency can be (somewhat) improved, if you target a small frequency range. (A few megaHertz.)

 

[pmstewart]

Hooligan,

Your true calling in life has been substantially overlooked!! You should have become a SHRINK!!.....LOL
I couldn't have said it better myself......ROFLAMO

Actually, one of the other members on RR said it best....all my boo-hooing is all because it's not, "the good ol' days anymore!".....

Krokus, I'm not doing band searches. I've been trying to scan with scanners that didn't pass rebanding in conventional mode. They bring a crap load of noise beacuse they don't detect the coded squelch properly. Not only that but they also hear the background of computer signals being sent over alternate control channels and the like. As well as trying to pickup garbage from a farther distance than my antenna's can manage.

My two chief complaints are related to the "ol' days".....I could setup three scanners and hear everything in the whole daggone county. Never miss any part of the traffic. Today, officer x of a certain tg and officer y of the same tg can be in touch with dispatch at exactly the same time on our simulcast. If I watch unitrunker there has been as many as 3 of the same tgid going on different freqs at the same time. That means if I hear officer y receive info from dispatch and before officer y can respond officer x breaks in I get the voice of officer x interrupting the voice of officer y.

Second complaint is too many tgid's to monitor.....just in my local area to get all the "local" traffic is no less than about 30 tgid's ......there is 5 dispatch channels alone. One for the SO, one for the local pd's south of my location, one for pd's north of my location, one for the pd in my location and the fire dept dispatch. If I want to hear the response from the fire dispatch it's generally done on an ops channel. Not to mention there is a car 2 car frequency for every da_ _ law enforcement and fire agency on the planet. Since our county dispatch is the central dispatch facility for most every group on the county and I live less than one mile from the dispatch center it's a little difficult to narrow anything down to a specific location other than the entire county.

I originally started my scanning map with one interest in mind - scanning the "I-15" corridor through Weber County. It's an approximately 8 mi stretch of freeway with the center of my city being within 3/4 of a mile east of the freeway and the city extends on the west side as well. Then I realized my scanning region should probably include UHP coming into and going out of the 8 mi stretch of I-15.

This new concept made me realize they have put Box Elder County (to the north) onto our simulcast site and it just blossomed from there. I cannot seem to get any scanlist down to under 70 tgid's and by the time it scans all of them I miss most of the voice traffic on most of the tgid's during the course of any business day......

 

[pmstewart]

Some members of the forum have indicated they break their playlists down into groups such as pd on one scanlist and fd on another scanlist. I've thought about that but when I'm monitoring I want to listen to them all anyway so that would just be a waste of a playlist.

We travel somewhat in the summer and I wanted to program the entire state of utah on my scanner so I didn't have to play with programming it while on vacation....just sit back and enjoy.....but with all the tgids I cannot come up with a suitable solution to setup the UCAN without using all my scanlists leaving nothing for anyone else......

I have 6 scanning units setup in my office.....scanner one pro-107, scanner two & three pro-197's (programmed identically), scanner 4 pro-2066 and pro 2052 unitrunked through my computer, scanners 5 & 6 Pro-39 and Uniden BC355 conventional scan and not a one of them play the same stuff at the same time unless it's early in the morning or late at night.

When the Pro-107 scans it is not cc specific (it scans all the sites I program) so it may land on 6016 on Mount Ogden but the scanners which are cc speciffic will never hear it on cc for Weber Simulcast even though they are roughly 3 miles apart. TG 6016 is on Weber Simulcast but not exclusively. It also dispatches from Promintory Point which I scan using the Uniden & Pro 39 in conventional mode. I'm not sure I'm adequately describing what is happening. Maybe I can play like Dorothy and click my heels and see if it takes me back to Kansas Hooligan!

When scanning any single tgid such as 6016 Weber County SO, if the unit is coming from the upper valley east of the mountains (Huntsville) the dispatch is focused only on Mount Ogden the closest location to the actual officer. Weber Simulcast and Promintory Point hear NONE of the activity but it is all part of our county.

Paul