ANNAPOLIS, Md. — The cold weather presents a lot of challenges for our first responders.
"It's that time of the year we are beginning to see an increase in the number of fires we respond to," said Captain Russ Davies with Anne Arundel County Fire. "We see the other different types of other emergencies, more vehicle accidents...people are on the road more, they're going out running their errands getting ready for the holidays."
And on top of the increased work for our firefighters and paramedics, COVID cases are on the rise and that just adds to the work load for paramedics.
"Try to avoid using the hospital as your health care provider. If you can go to an urgent care, if you an see your personal physician, that's an alternative to going to the emergency room," Davies said.
Using an ambulatory service may not be the best hospital plan for you and it certainly impacts all of us.
"The paramedics are capable of giving advanced care so, when they are being utilized to bring a patient to the hospital that isn't in acute distress it does tie up a resource to that community and once you go to the hospital, you get triaged along with everybody else so it's not even a way to be seen faster at the hospital by going by ambulance," he explained.
Davies says if it's not critical, a better way for you to go to the hospital is to use the ride programs like Uber or Lyft. Using a ambulance with highly trained paramedics and expensive equipment is not the best use of resources.
