BUFFALO, N.Y. — "A picture is worth a thousand words," said Dr. Joseph Bart, EMS director for UBMD Emergency Medicine.
That's exactly why UBMD physicians are working with AMR to soon get five emergency response vehicles on the road.
"If we can get there and lay our eyes on the actual scenes themselves and be able to analyze and then decide about patient care on the spot, that's beneficial ultimately to the patient," Bart said.
To the patient and to the emergency rooms who are already swamped.
UBMD physicians or EMS fellows will now be able to provide a helping hand in any high severity 911 call or mass casualty situation.
"The definition of mass casualty is that you've run out of resources. In a perfect world, we'd have an unlimited amount of ambulances and firefighters and EMT's that are present. The reality is that many times in a mass casualty situation, we run out of those," Bart said.
With this new program, AMR paramedics will get help from the physicians about who should get sent to the ER first, and treat patients on scene instead of sending them to the hospital.
The physicians will also have additional tools in their cars including cardiac life support, basic life support, communications gear and refrigerators for medications.
"Unfortunately some events happen that we can't have control over. But we need to talk about how better we can partner ourselves for the preparedness when it comes to those types of environments and those scenes," Bart said.
You will see the cars at scenes in a few weeks.
Until then, physicians will undergo training on the program.