Multiple Patients On Scene / In Ambulance

Instructions for how to dispatch multiple patients on scene, or multiple patients in a single ambulance.

Perhaps you already have experience assigning multiple patients to a wheelchair van. You can do the same thing for ambulances, if dire conditions require a BLS+ crew to transport two or three patients at the same time.

If you are looking for help assigning multiple responders to a single patient, check the Multiple Responders Guide.

One Dispatch Record Per Patient 

As usual, there must be a separate dispatch record per patient, even if they are all travelling in the same ambulance. This is so because each patient's transport is separately billable, and separately reportable to the state trauma registry.

Assigning a Second Patient to an Ambulance

When you go to assign the second patient to an ambulance, the Dispatch Assignment page will not show the ambulance as an available choice, since it already has a patient onboard and is therefore considered "full". 

To override this, untick the "Hide shifts that are fully loaded during this call's time interval" checkbox. You will then see the ambulance, and can assign the second call to it. The crew can then mark themselves enroute/onscene as normal, the same way that wheelchair drivers mark their progress on multiple simultaneous calls.

If This Happens Often

If your operation routinely transports two patients at a time in an ambulance, then you can configure your vehicle record to let AngelTrack know.

Normally, the vehicle record for an ambulance will be marked as "Patient Capacity = 1", meaning that it only has one stretcher and thus normally transports only one person at a time. When it has a patient onboard, AngelTrack therefore knows it is full, and thus will not show it to dispatchers as available for another patient. As noted above, a dispatcher must then override this by unticking the "Hide shifts that are fully loaded during this call's time interval" checkbox when assigning a second dispatch to it.

Since this will be a regular occurrence for your operation, edit the vehicle record and change its patient capacity to 2. AngelTrack will thereafter report the vehicle as available for a second patient, without need to use the override checkbox.

Your wheelchair vans, if any, are probably already configured this way... but if not, then it's a good idea to set their capacities to 2 or 3 or however many sets of straps they have onboard.