For at least the last two weeks of the coronavirus pandemic, Montgomery County’s ambulances have been taking patients to whichever hospital is best suited to take them, a Fire & Rescue official said Monday.
Fire & Rescue spokesman Pete Piringer posted on Twitter over the weekend that the county’s hospitals were on a “blue alert,” which means that there is a shortage of resources. In this case, Piringer wrote that there was a shortage of critical-care-unit beds.
Piringer said in an interview Monday morning that Maryland’s Institute for Emergency Medical Services Systems maintains a monitoring system for all hospitals in the state. It classifies a hospital based on the resources it has.
A blue alert can occur when there is a high demand for EMS and hospital services, such as during an inclement weather event or other emergencies, according to the state’s hospital alert classification system.
A red alert means a hospital is no longer accepting patients due to a shortage of beds.
“We have essentially an EMS supervisor who assists EMS units in transport to the most appropriate hospital for the patient. So it’s not necessarily the closest hospital, but it’s the one that’s best for the patient based on how busy a particular hospital is,” Piringer said.
Piringer said that during the coronavirus pandemic, “we know all the hospitals are busy, and we’re trying to relieve the ones that might be overworked or overstressed.”
A blue alert evenly distributes patient transports, so one hospital doesn’t become overwhelmed. A blue alert also lets the county’s EMS override a red alert if it needs to, Piringer said.
“If they’re on red alert, they don’t want patients. But if we go on blue alert, we can override that if other hospitals are busy,” he said.
As of 9:15 a.m. on Monday, no Montgomery County hospitals in the state system were advertised as being on red alert.
Piringer said there have been multiple times before the coronavirus pandemic that hospitals in the county were on blue alert, but not for multiple weeks at a time.
“It wouldn’t be unusual for us to go on blue alert, but it’s usually just a couple hours at a time,” he said.
Dan Schere can be reached at daniel.schere@moco360.media
