As of March 12th, NYC 911 Ambulances Will No Longer Allow You To Choose Which Hospital You Would Like To Be Transported To

by CrownHeights.info

If you call 911 for an ambulance in NYC, you are no longer able to choose your preferred destination after the FDNY released a memo this past week removing a patient’s ability to choose.

“Effective immediately, all patients will be transported to the receiving facility determined by the hospital suggestion mask,” the FDNY memo states. “Crews shall not override the CAD-recommended hospital.”

Previously, a 10-minute rule allowed 911 ambulance to transport patients to the closest hospital capable of treating them or any other hospital that was ten minutes further away. This gave significant leeway to the ambulance crews, allowing them to provide care tailored to the needs of the patient.

That’s over now.

Gerritson Beach Fire Department, which provides volunteer ambulance services for their community, was one of the first companies to respond to the new rule, posting to their social media about the change.

“As of today, New York City ambulances no longer let you choose your hospital—you will be taken where the system decides, not necessarily where you want to go,” Gerritson Beach Fire Department wrote on their Facebook page. “Even if you have a preferred hospital where your doctors are, that no longer matters unless a rare medical exception is approved. If you refuse, you’ll have to sign a refusal form, and the ambulance will leave.”

Where previously a call for a 911 ambulance in the Crown Heights area could mean transport to hospitals such as Kings County Hospital, SUNY Downstate Hospital, Interfaith Hospital, Methodist Hospital, Brookdale Hospital, and maybe even Cobble Hill, under the new rule, it will be only Kings County Hospital if you are South of Eastern Parkway and Interfaith Hospital if you are north of it.

Neither of these hospitals are considered first choice for the Crown Heights Jewish community.

Thankfully, this new rule does not apply to volunteer and private ambulance services such as Hatzalah and Senior Care EMS, with only 911 responding ambulances being required to follow this rule.

According to the memo, patients who refuse to be transported by the 911 responding ambulance to the “CAD (Computer Aided Dispatch) recommended facility”, will be asked to sign a refusal form and stay at home so long as the EMS crew believes that the patient has a “low index of suspicion”, meaning that they are not in danger of their life. Should the patient refuse to sign the legal refusal form and still demand transport, the memo states that the EMS crew should take that as the patient “declining transport”, and leave the patient at home regardless.

This is a major change to the FDNY’s 911 Ambulance policy which may have a silver lining. Faced with few options under the 911 system, many people who regularly use, or abuse, the 911 system, may begin calling private ambulances or volunteer ambulance services more often, freeing up the emergency crews for faster response times to critical emergencies.