Flaw In Emergency Response System May Have Killed Hundreds

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.'"

Comments

Re:More like a flaw in statistics

[jo_ham]

Welcome to the debate as seen by everyone on the side of socialised care.

What do you think Palin et al have been doing since Clinton (XX, not XY) tried to deal with this issue many years ago. It has been torpedoed very effectively by people who are determined to keep it the way it is, since it is far less profitable to actually provide proper healthcare to your citizens.

I have spent 15 years debating this issue moderately, while many of my friends have been personally crippled (both literally and financially) by the US system and I am just sick and tired of the anti-healthcare lobby getting away with so much shit, while people I love suffer needlessly.

The US is one of the best and most powerful countries in the world, but your healthcare system is in serious need of change. You are the *only* first world nation that does not provide universal healthcare for its citizens, and you spend *by far* the most money of any country on healthcare as a whole, but it's all going to the wrong places.

I have spent years trying to debate this fairly, in the face of some of the worst lies and distortions I have ever seen, so sue me. I'm sick of it.

If nothing else you now know exactly how the rest of us feel when Palin herself comes out with "death panels", or a right wing publication comes out with outrageous lies like "Stephen Hawking would have died if he'd have been born under the UK system" (he's British, he was, and he owes his life to it).

As a British citizen who (traditionally) votes Labour, I am so far to the left on the US political scale that I consider Obama to be too right wing for my tastes.

Re:More like a flaw in statistics

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

You are completely wrong. America was considered to be a single continent, divided into North, Central, and South America. That changed in the 50s, when the USA wanted to get out the word that they had their own fucking continent.

America was named after Americo Vespucio. He named ALL OF THIS LANDS, North to South, America.

Also, why do YOU get to determine the name of South America? Why do YOU get to define that we are "The Americas"? Only in USA textbooks we are called "The Americas". Nowhere else. Spain, the country that discovered all of America calls the whole continent America.

There are songs from a variety of countries refering to "America" as the whole continent.

I think you have been brainwashed by the education in your country, and I think you believe you are too important. I think you should shut the fuck up.