CNN.com - Paging Dr. Gupta Blog

CNN.com - Paging Dr. Gupta Blog:
Someone responding to Dr. Gupta's point from Larry King Live last night:
"Hello Dr. Gupta.

I watched your discussion with Micheal last night, which I thought was quite interesting as I have the good fortune to live in Canada where we do have universal health care. This is certanly an issue that needs to be discussed. I did want to comment on one of the points you brought up last night as i felt it did not seem exactly true with my experiences. I am an advanced life support paramedic in Alberta and often treat and transport patients needing urgent angiograms. Althought weight times are an issue with urgent unstable angina type patients, it seemed you were painting a picture of emergent AMI patients were waiting six days to recieve life saving angiograms.
My experiece is nothing like that. I am proud to say that our region EMS services around Calgary have developed a system in which in feild 12-lead ECG's are read by responding paramedics and if determined that the patient is having a miocardial infarct, the 12 lead is faxed to the trauma centre and the patient is transported directly to the catheter lab, by-passing the emergency department decreasing the door to cath time.
Many incidents have seen patinets arriving for angiogram /plasty in less than an hour of onset of symptoms.
It is important to note that this service is available to everyone. As a front line health care worker paramedics experience first hand many of the delays in our healhcare system in Alberta, however, emergency situations are always dealt with in a timely manner, with no bias or discrimination based on wallet size.

humbly yours,

K. Palmer
EMT-Paramedic
Banff, Alberta Canada "

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