Air 5 calls Sheriffs radio and they call the hospital on the old land line. People in the Huntington ER are too busy to monitor any radios. In some instances the ER staff will go to the Med radio to communicate more patient details. The MED channels are split half duplex.
That's incorrect. In fact, as a base hospital, they're mandated to respond. And Paramedics are mandated to make contact with their base station whenever possible. Exceptions are available but, by and large, it's a mandate.
Base hospitals have a radio, and a landline. 10 years ago, most paramedic units were issued with cell phones and it started becoming more and more routine to landline the base hospital. This furthered HIPPA goals of protecting the patient's privacy. It's not a mandate that the phone be used however, and some Paramedics still prefer the use of their radio.
As a base station, Huntington is required to have a Mobile Intensive Care Nurse available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Only a MICN is allowed to answer the base station. Whenever necessary, the MICN involves the emergency room physician.
No one is sitting around the ER monitoring a radio:
1) When a paramedic uses a radio to make contact, they enter a code via the DTMF pad. This code sets off an alarm inside the ER advising the MICN that a paramedic is making contact.
2) When the landline is used (as is most of the time now), the alarm goes off when the phone call is made.
From time to time, the Paramedics are too busy to make base station contact OR the time to the hospital is too short to warrant it. In those cases, the Paramedics can ask their dispatcher to advise the ER that they're inbound.
You should also note that not all hospitals are base stations, In fact, only a handful are. In the SGV, the base stations are Huntington, Arcadia, and Pomona Valley. Paramedic units are assigned a base station; they don't call whomever they want. They make contact; provide patient info and treatments rendered; and advise the base station of their nearest ER. The base station creates a "run report"; copies down the info; provides an order for more treatment if necessary; and checks to see if the nearest ER is open and available for ALS runs. If the nearest ER is not open, then the Paramedics are directed to the nearest open ER.
Here are the relevant protocols/procedures/etc.
http://file.lacounty.gov/SDSInter/dhs/206183_3047-1-16.pdf
http://file.lacounty.gov/SDSInter/d...08BaseHospitalContactandTransportCriteria.pdf
Hope this clears up any confusion.