Paramedics Cite King Hospital’s Long Delays : Health: Ambulance drivers say they have waited up to six hours to unload patients. But county hospital officials say the wait was only 10 or 15 minutes in the last two weeks.

Warning of a new danger posed by severe overcrowding at Los Angeles County’s public hospital emergency rooms, ambulance drivers say they have been forced to wait as long as six hours to unload sick and injured patients onto hospital gurneys at Martin Luther King Jr./ Drew Medical Center in Watts.

The delay not only jeopardizes patient care, according to the drivers, but also keeps the ambulances out of service, preventing them from responding to other emergencies.

Diana Davis, the paramedic coordinator for Adams Ambulance, which contracts with the county Department of Health Services to respond to 911 emergency calls, recalled one case a couple months ago in which the company’s paramedics waited almost two hours to unload a patient with a gunshot wound to the abdomen. More recently, patients with less severe injuries have waited as long as six hours, she said.

Gurneys are so scarce and hospital personnel are so busy that the company’s paramedics frequently roam the hospital trying to scrounge up gurneys themselves, she said.

“Ambulance companies and city paramedics have had long waits trying to unload their patients (at King) so they can then get rolling again,” said Virginia Price Hastings, an official at the county Department of Health Services. She said city fire officials have complained that their paramedics have waited more than three hours.

Eugene Olea, chief of operations at King, said that when this matter recently was brought to his attention, he began monitoring the situation during the last two weeks and found no such delays. During this time, he said, paramedics have spent an average of just 10 to 15 minutes from the time they arrive with a patient to their departure.

The controversy at King follows recent disclosures about severe overcrowding at County-USC Medical Center that has resulted in sick patients being left unattended on gurneys in the hospital’s public corridors.

Both hospitals receive a disproportionate share of acutely ill and severely injured patients who do not have medical insurance. Because of the high volume of patients, these public hospitals are considered to be linchpins in the county’s overburdened emergency services network.

Hastings said a meeting is scheduled Monday at King to discuss ways to improve the situation, but she added, “I don’t know the solution.”

A top-ranking fire official in charge of the city paramedics, Alan Cowan, has complained to county health officials of situations in which city ambulances have been stacked up for prolonged periods at King waiting to unload patients onto hospital gurneys.

Cowan acknowledged in an interview that he has complained about long delays, but declined to discuss specifics. He said he is working with hospital and county officials to resolve problems.

Doug Brown, paramedic coordinator at Goodhew Ambulance, which contracts with the county to respond to 911 emergency calls, recalled an occasion when three of his ambulances were tied up at King, one of them for more than four hours.

He said he has made formal complaints to county officials about the problem of unloading patients.

“It’s not just that they don’t have enough gurneys,” Brown said. “They could buy a bunch of gurneys, but that wouldn’t help solve the problem” of inadequate staffing and space.

Davis, at Adams Ambulance, said that as recently about two weeks ago, an ambulance crew of emergency medical technicians waited three hours to unload a patient onto a hospital gurney at King. A month ago, she said, they waited more than six hours. The crews were carrying patients with minor injuries such as broken bones, she said, or ailments like mild asthma or abdominal pains.

“It’s an ongoing problem and it’s getting progressively worse,” Davis said. “Unfortunately, the (emergency care) system has fallen apart and the county hospitals are always hit first.”

Dr. William Shoemaker, chief of emergency medicine at King, was unavailable for comment. However, Dr. Syama Atluri, a senior emergency physician at King, said that “nobody is dying” for lack of care or a long wait. He acknowledged that ambulances have backed up outside the hospital on busy nights when the emergency room is full and all the hospital’s intensive care beds are occupied.

“We need more intensive care beds,” he said.

It typically takes ambulances less than 15 minutes to transport patients to King. But the paramedics cannot leave until the patient is accepted for treatment and transferred from the ambulance gurney to a hospital gurney.

“They can’t just leave the patient and walk out the door,” Hastings said. “For them, the problem is that when they can’t unload a patient, they’re out of service and they can’t get into the field to answer the next call.”