PEORIA -- Dr. John Carroll, the Haitian Hearts founder and hospital gadfly has an interesting new post on his blog, Peoria's Medical Mafia. It's about the relationship between OSF St. Francis Medical Center and AMT, Advanced Medical Transport, the ambulance service controlled by Peoria's three hospitals.
Carroll has long maintained that hospital officials used their influence to keep the Peoria Fire Department from delivering top level emergency care, to protect the hospital's investment in AMT.
The situation threatened the lives of people having all types of serious medical problems. When the firefighters arrived first, the firefighters who were Paramedics were unable to offer advanced life support or transport these patients to local hospitals.
OSF officials controlled the rules of emergency care so that the firefighters could only offer Basic support and the patient had to wait for AMT to arrive at the scene to receive advanced life support.
That changed this summer, as some firefighters now are allowed to provide advanced care.
Carroll has fought for this change for years, and been attacked for his advocacy.
Check out his post.
-- Elaine Hopkins
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