You place a call to 911 because of an emergency, but it’s not an ambulance that rolls up; it’s that Uber driver from yesterday morning. NBC 4 news reported today that D.C. EMS is thinking about tapping the transportation company's workforce, making use of the many Uber drivers spread across the city by turning them into ambulances.
To accomplish this, D.C EMS officials would place trained nurses at the 911 call center to determine whether a call is “low-priority,” and could be kicked to an Uber driver, instead of taking up limited first responder resources. Uber would be called if the severity of a case warranted a trip to the doctor's office and not the hospital emergency room.
"We are trying to find creative ways to try to reduce the strain on the system," D.C. FEMS Chief Gregory Dean told NBC 4 on Monday.
A staggering 197,092 calls are made per year in the District, which ranks 8th in the nation. One ambulance from D.C. handled approximately 20 calls each day (for a total average of 7,600 calls) last year.
Photo credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DCFEMS_ambulance_at_vehicular_accident_-_2013-03-15.jpg
