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Flaw In Emergency Response System May Have Killed Hundreds

Posted by timothy on from the problem-with-algorithms dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that a flaw in the way emergency response software was set up to handle Category A responses in Great Britain may have cost hundreds of lives over the past ten years. Most ambulance services use an international computerized system designed in America and in the US version, a fall of more than 6 feet receives the maximum priority response. However, the government committee which governs its use in Great Britain decided that such cases should be deemed less urgent, and excluded from an eight minute category A target response time. If a call involved a fall of more than 6 feet it was designated a lower priority 'category B response' despite the presence of life-threatening conditions which were supposed to receive the most urgent category A response. The flaw came to light after Bonnie Mason, 58, fell 12 feet down the stairs and died from a head injury after emergency controllers in Suffolk failed to identify her situation as 'life-threatening.'"

9 of 437 comments (clear)

  1. More like a flaw in statistics by selven · · Score: 4, Informative

    The summary sounds like "we underestimated how dangerous a medium distance fall can be, so we didn't have the correct priorities and more people died than could have". That isn't really a flaw in the algorithm, it's just a flaw in one specific parameter in the algorithm.

    1. Re:More like a flaw in statistics by jo_ham · · Score: 5, Informative

      Alternatively, we could have a US system, where the ambulance won't set off unless your insurance covers it, or won't take you to the nearest hospital because that is not "in network".

      Or, they'll take you to the hospital, unconscious, and then stick you with the bill because the trip wasn't "pre-approved".

      This has nothing to do with socialised care and everything to do with bureaucrats making decisions that affect people - it's is not exclusive to socialised medicine. Regardless of how you slice it, ambulances and ambulance crews are a finite resource and priorities have to be set. They should not be set by non-medical people though, as in this case which was clearly wrong, and in the case of a lot of medical decisions under the US system (where your insurance company, and not a doctor, decides the care you receive).

      I'll take the NHS any day.

    2. Re:More like a flaw in statistics by SUB7IME · · Score: 5, Informative

      Just replying so that people know not to take your post literally. Ambulances in the US will take you to the nearest hospital with appropriate facilities for your condition.

    3. Re:More like a flaw in statistics by twostix · · Score: 3, Informative

      I hate to break it to you but the NHS is the worst of all the western public healthcare systems.

      I'll take the Australian, German or French system any day over the abomination that is the NHS.

      And I'm sure that you're aware that most states in the US (which of course are as populous and economically large as most European countries) have various forms of public insurance and public public care, so much so that even the "worst case" "victims" the administration keep bringing out to show how awful the current US healthcare system is have all been covered and receiving full treatment in their respective states public systems. Something the administration always conveniently neglect to mention.

      The current rigmarole in the United States regarding healthcare is not about public / private, it's about the Federal Government moving into areas that it's does not have the authority to legislate. It's directly comparable to if (when) the European Union decides it's going to "take over" all of its member states discrete healthcare systems and run them from Brussels.

      When that happens the EU *certainly* won't choose the UK model, and given how noisy and condescending you Brits have been about the Americans unwillingness to allow complete take over of healthcare by their Federal government don't expect any sympathy when the EU (yes they are talking about it http://ec.europa.eu/health/ph_overview/co_operation/mobility/patient_mobility_en.htm) comes to take over yours.

    4. Re:More like a flaw in statistics by Colonel+Korn · · Score: 5, Informative

      And yet, the 'rationed' socialist healthcare here in Britain is still a metric fuckton better than what you get in the US

      How strange. When I was living in the UK there always seemed to be some kid on TV looking for money to pay for them to fly to America to get treatment which they couldn't get under the rationed socialist NHS.

      While I was a student there were two cases of someone in my group of a dozen friends having a serious medical problem and being told that there weren't resources in American hospitals, despite their good health insurance, to treat them promptly enough to prevent permanent disability. Both went to India and received immediate care that successfully fixed their problems and despite the fact that they had to pay 100% of the cost of surgery, the total cost including airfare was thousands less than their share of the cost for the same procedures under their health plans. Here near the northern border of the US I know someone who goes to Canada to get treatment unavailable under the rationed capitalist American system.

      --
      "I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
    5. Re:More like a flaw in statistics by sjames · · Score: 3, Informative

      Probably because socialized systems won't perform a futile procedure, but in the U.S. if you have the bux, you can get any treatment you want, even if it's useless.

    6. Re:More like a flaw in statistics by ahankinson · · Score: 4, Informative

      No, you don't have your own continent, and we have a Queen you may have heard of.

      Signed,

      Canada

  2. Very misleading title and description ! by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 3, Informative

    The title of this thread is "Flaw In Emergency Response System May Have Killed Hundreds"

    The first sentence contains the following: "... a flaw in the way emergency response software was set up to handle Category A responses in Great Britain may have cost hundreds of lives over the past ten years"

    BOTH ARE VERY MISLEADING !!

    The FLAW of the whole thing is the BRITISH GOVERNMENT COMMITTEE which decides that a fall of more than six (6) feet SHOULD BE DEEMED LESS URGENT, AND EXCLUDED FROM AN EIGHT (8) MINUTE CATEGORY A TARGET RESPONSE TIME " !!

    Why blame the software or the emergency controllers when it's the idiotic British bureaucracy which has fcuked up in the first place?

    --
    Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
    1. Re:Very misleading title and description ! by KeithIrwin · · Score: 5, Informative

      Because there were two things which went wrong:
      1) falls from over six foot were deemed to not be that serious but also
      2) a computer error (in program or configuration) caused that to override anything else.

      That is, under the decisions made by the bureaucracy the rules should have said:
      1) if someone has fallen from a great height it is a type A (highest class) emergency
      2) if someone has fallen from a moderate height it is a class B emergency unless there is something else which elevates it to a class A
      3) if someone has fallen from ground level (slipped or tripped), it is a class B emergency unless there is something else which elevates it to class A
      4) if someone is having trouble breathing, it is a class A emergency
      5) is someone is bleeding profusely, it is a class A emergency
      (etc).

      The rules as implemented by the system actually effectively said:
      1) if someone has fallen from a great height it is a type A (highest class) emergency
      2) if someone has fallen from a moderate height it is a class B emergency
      3) if someone has fallen from ground level (slipped or tripped), it is a class B emergency unless there is something else which elevates it to class A
      4) if someone is having trouble breathing, it is a class A emergency
      5) is someone is bleeding profusely, it is a class A emergency
      (etc).

      Note the shortened version of rule 2 and why this is relevant: moderate falls were being categorized as class B even when there were other risk factors. In the example case, we had an ambulance which was on its way to treat a woman who had fallen a moderate height and was bleeding profusely. It was diverted to instead help a woman who had slipped and fallen and was having trouble breathing because the first was classified as urgency level B and the first as urgency level A. This is clearly an error in either the software code, configuration, or the use of the program (most likely the configuration, I would guess, but that's just speculation on my part).

      The committee's decision was that moderate falls shouldn't automatically elevate to class A. In practice, the system was assuming that moderate falls always were class B. So something was going wrong with the program, its configuration, or its use.