92-year-old Alberta woman remains in hospital days after her 911 call was transferred to 811 | 24CA News

Jacqui Bayne’s mother, 92-year-old Barbara Ross turned sick final week. Bayne knew her mother wanted quick medical care and known as 911 for an ambulance, however the ambulance was by no means dispatched.

“I said, ‘She’s weak, she’s dehydrated, everything is going through her. She can barely stand, can barely walk,’ and they said, ‘I’m going to switch you over to 811 so they can assess it.’”

Bayne took her mother to the emergency room and waited the entire day for Ross to be admitted. Ross was handled launched to go residence however her signs didn’t enhance.

Ross lives in a impartial dwelling facility the place employees do checks within the morning, and Ross wasn’t waking up.

“I received a call from the facility again — they had problems waking her. When I spoke to my mother she said again, ‘weakness’. I went over there, I said this is ridiculous. I called 911,” Bayne stated.

“I was immediately transferred to 811.”

Bayne stated at the moment, she was requested to provide the telephone to her mother and take it off of speaker telephone.

“They asked if she had chest pains, she said yes. They asked if she has some breathing issues, she said yes. She was saying how weak she was, couldn’t walk, couldn’t eat anything and put me back on the phone and basically said to take to her to her GP,” Bayne stated.

Bayne didn’t need to go to a household physician —she wished her mother to be handled at a hospital. She was apprehensive about transporting Ross herself as a result of she was so weak.

“They suggested all sorts of arrangements to do in the car transport. I said she is too weak. They told me to call a medical transport agency to take her.”

Bayne stated she gave up with the dialog and helped mother dress after which took her to the emergency room on the Misericordia Hospital.

“She needed to be there on a stretcher, she waited the entire day at the Misericordia in chair slumped over. The security guard even felt sorry for her.”

The province introduced early February, 911 calls decided to be much less extreme will likely be transferred to 811 to talk to a registered nurse. It’s meant to release paramedics to give attention to life threatening calls.

The well being minister estimated this might divert as much as 40,000 calls a 12 months the place ambulances aren’t wanted.

Alberta Health Services stated in a press release on Sunday, transfers should not compelled and any Albertan requiring EMS will obtain it.

“This process uses a set of complex, internationally accepted guidelines to assess the seriousness of an EMS call and determine if an ambulance needs to be dispatched or the call can be transferred to a Health Link RN for further assessment. After the RN assessment, should it be determined an ambulance is required, Health Link will immediately transfer the call back to EMS for emergency response to be dispatched.”

After this expertise, Bayne isn’t too certain how properly the method working.

“If something happens to her again, heaven forbid we have to call 911.

“It’s horrible because you don’t know where to turn or what to do anymore and it’s degrading for this poor person to go through this.”

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