H.E.A.R Frequency

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oldranger

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Has anybody heard any ambulances calling your local hospital's ER over the HEAR frequency(155.3400) ?
I live in Sylacauga and I used to hear ambulances calling in to the Coosa Valley Medical Center regularly.
I can't remember when I last heard them.
Maybe they are using cell phones to call in to the ER.
 
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kwrxxx

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oldranger said:
Has anybody heard any ambulances calling your local hospital's ER over the HEAR frequency(155.3400) ?
I live in Sylacauga and I used to hear ambulances calling in to the Coosa Valley Medical Center regularly.
I can't remember when I last heard them.
Maybe they are using cell phones to call in to the ER.

Maybe they have switch to the MEDCOM channels or does the area have a trunked system that they are using?
 

SAR923

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I occasionally hear Air Evac 64 on 155.34 and it's always prefaced "Our SouthernLinc isn't working". I never hear ground ambulance traffic. I think they are all on SL or cell phones.
 

kingpin

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Here in Baldwin county, HEAR is hopping. I mostly hear some of the Mobile Hospitals like USA, Providence, and Infirmary on there, receiving enroute patient reports.
 

rbryant2

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It varies greatly by region; in the Birmingham area, many of the ground ambulances and some of the hospital ED's are not even equipped with HEAR radios (or VHF radios of any kind). They depend exclusively on cell phones and S-Linc - not a good plan. The only HEAR use in the area is the air transport units (mainly Air Evac) calling arrival notices to UAB or Children's. As Kingpin said, however, in other areas of the state including Huntsville and Mobile, you can regularly hear patient reports being called to area hospitals.
 

SAR923

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Prattville Baptist Hospital still has a HEAR radio but it's never used on any regular basis. The one time it did get used was during our tornado when...Surprise!....SouthernLink collapsed again, the landline to the hospital was out, and cell phones only worked intermitently. We were actually lucky in that the tornado missed the main tower that carries all of the city and county radio antennas as well as most of the cell phone carriers by less than a quarter mile. Everything would have been simplex VHF and no cell phones if that tower had gone down. I have no idea why EMA folks here think that redundancy for SL is a cell phone. :(
 

emcom

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HEAR is still used in Huntsville. All HEMSI units have HEAR. It is secondary to 462.950 for patient reports (ie: during very busy times when multiple pt reports coming in). Also, out of town ambulances coming in to Huntsville use the HEAR if they don't have a uhf radio on board.
 
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oldranger

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More On H.E.A.R.

I used to hear ambulances calling in to hospitals all over central Alabama.All the Birmingham area hospitals,Anniston,Montgomery,Prattville and sometimes Druid City in Tuscaloosa.
Let me requalify my last statement;I could hear hospital ER's answering ambulances in some cases.
 

713

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HEAR frequency in Sylacauga

It's my understanding some of the area EMS units mostly use cell phones for pre-arrival reports. I hope (skeptically) that they will maintain the HEAR system for disasters when the cellular network is damaged/overloaded. Valid licenses for 155.340 can still be found in the FCC database for several of the E. Cen. AL hospitals and ambulance services. However, if it's not used regularly, cobwebs (volume turned down, radios turned off) and lack of training will be a problem.
 
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A few months ago I heard TCC doing a roll call of the local hospitals on HEAR. Most didn't respond at all!
 

713

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Tcc?

What/who is TCC? The last I knew, the hospitals in the E. Central AL area have been using CTCSS since they phased out the old rotary dial selective calling. If someone attempted a roll call without scheduling it, or using the CTCSS tone for the specific ER they wanted to contact, no one would hear them even if all the radios were on and ready for calls.
 
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TCC is Trauma Communications Center, part of the Birmingham Regional Emergency Medical Service System (BREMSS). I didn't hear the old rotary tones or anything, just "TCC" calling various local hospitals. I don't recall who responded & who didn't, I THINK UAB & Brookwood did.
 

ssr

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HEAR frequency

what is the frequency for HEAR in Mobile and Baldwin ? I am not hearing this on my trunked system as much as I used to. SSR
 

SJ26115

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155.340 HEAR System

The HEAR System is still mandated by the AL Dept. of Public Health / EMS Division for all ambulances statewide. However, they do not enforce this on the hospitals. Most hospitals have done away with their HEAR System radio systems. ADPH did put in place a SouthernLinc system which all hospitals in the state have, but some do not respond to the weekly roll call. EMS providers have pretty much gone to calling in patient reports via cell phone or on SouthernLinc for privacy concerns. Some of your bigger cities like Huntsville, Birmingham, and Mobile have a little more traffic on the HEAR System in those areas, but not to the extent it was used 20 years ago.

I would like to see ADPH mandate the hospitals to have it, simply for the fact in a disaster situation, like the April 27th tornadoes, cell phone service will be jammed up and SouthernLinc will most likely be down. It is a reliable (probably THE most reliable system) backup system for EMS to Hospital communications.
 

CSL126

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The emergency room at DCH in Tuscaloosa still has a HEAR radio, but it's only used as a backup. Every call that I've ever heard come in has been via cell phone.
 

Avery93

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In the Northwest part of the state, most hospitals still have VHF radios; however most of them now use tone squelch on the HEAR channel. The PLs for each hospital have been made available for a while now (towards the end of this newsletter, among other places), but many air and some ground ambulances still do not transmit the correct PL when trying to raise a hospital. There has been quite a few times when I have heard a unit trying multiple times to contact a hospital, but the unit was transmitting the incorrect, or no PL.
 
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