He might have saved you a thousand dollars.

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

While I would hope they would just hand you some betadine, bandages, neosporin, etc.; usually the opposite is true, they are all too anxious to drive you to the local hospital (a $1200 taxi ride) just to treat a little road rash.

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they wanted to stay on the scene in case of a serious medical condition (ex. heart attack, stroke, broken bones), but they still should have done a basic patch-up gratis IMO.

Maybe some EMTs on the forum can provide a perspective.

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ECMGN Therapy Silicon Valley:
Depression, Neurocognitive problems, Dementias (Testing and Evaluation), Trauma and PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

This.

If you don't have any ortho or head injuries/ anything that I am worried could be life/limb, I'd probably recommend that you get yourself some bandaging of your own. I did 6+ years of EMS/standby's and also 911 emergency response. Treatment with no transport is a minimum $375 fee, ambulance transfer is an automatic $675 base fee and $10 per mile, and $15 extra each mile after 50 miles. We worked for a non profit organization too, so we weren't your average commercial industry trying to fill the pockets of the board members, merely making budget and having enough money to keep supplies up for the community.


I'm pretty sure wound cleansing in the E.R is a base fee of $150, and a physician fee is over $1,000.



edit: to add what was mentioned in the above post. An injury is an injury, and unless we're talking mass casualty, there would definitely be no need to delay a transport because there could be a "more serious" matter. This again coincides that the injury is viable for EMS transport, such as what I mentioned above. A broken bone will be transported as would a heart attack, however if both happened at the same time, the heart attack would take precedence.

double edit: they didn't clean the wound or do any bandaging and I read the OP wrong. I do admit it would have been beneficial for them to do some cleaning, however depending on their company could still have cost you hundreds of dollars.

Get their name so you can send a thank you card for all the money they saved you. Maybe even toss in a $100 bill as an extra thanks.

I would have been fired if I said that to someone with whom I had made patient contact.
Legally, once contact is initiated we always have to offer aid, transport, etc. We can try to "persuade" patents that they don't need assistance (if they truly don't) but, ultimately, the customer is always right.

You should contact the rd and let them know about this appalling (and illegal ?) behavior by their medical staff.

You are 100% wrong!......

You should write him a thank you letter.

Not to be a total dumb ass…but could someone from the U.S. please explain? As canadians who train often in the U.S. we make sure we are insured "to the hilt" so to speak, I thought that some level of basic care would be free???

In Canada a lot of races use ST johns ambulance as their "free" level of care. IE doesn't matter who you are or where you are from you will receive basic care at the race sight.

Is this not the situation in the U.S. ?

Maurice

What the hell is wrong with the healthcare system in your country? Why the US government haven't adopted an NHS style system is beyond me.
Your friend as injured and then refused treatment (for whatever reason), and the reaction from other people in the US is that they did him a favour? I find that ridiculous.
If that had happened to you in the UK, you would have been patched up and taken to A&E for further treatment free of charge. Money would never have been mentioned regardless of what treatment you received (only certain specialist drugs incur a surcharge for the patient).
We have what is objectively recognised as the best healthcare system in the world, and it costs less than half per person compared to the US system.

You guys need to catch up.

Precisely, is there not some kind of free basic medical care laid on by the race organisers in the US? Surely things like road rash and dehydration are common in races and I would say free basic treatment for these is an essential part of race organisation, as much as food stations and portaloos.

Coming from the land of free healthcare (the UK) I would be outraged if I went to race medical staff with an injury and they told me to go to the nearest clinic that could be miles away.

You just needed stuff and didn't get it for free (which you wanted, I guess) or a huge bill (which may have been possible).

Not a big deal. If he/she had said that for more serious injury, I'd be appalled.

But road rash? That was pretty cold by the ambulance worker, but maybe they had something more important to deal with. Or maybe their own budget is tight.

He friend had you there to get the stuff. Go do it.

I'll add that my club and another local promoter have basic first aid stuff like that on site for use by participants for free. But that's different than the ambulance services that are at some races - some of those charge for services.

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http://www.jt10000.com/

All we asked for was some basic supplies and a little help from the medical support you would think we have access to as athletes racing in an event.

This is concerning news to me as well. In most of the races in our region, the medics, aid stations and ambulance personnel are arranged for and paid for by the organizers. Medical evaluation and management onsite is free, especially to the extent of washing the wound, checking for fractures/concussions/internal injury/systemic problems like shock, hyponatremia, hypokalemia, heart problems ex. atrial fibrillation or angina; betadyne, band aid or gauze and tape, simple meds such as oral rehydrating solutions, paracetamol or NSAIDS. I have noted the same services given for free in IMs and non-WTC races in the Asia-Pacific region and Australia.
Having done some races in the US and planning a few more in the future, it would be very important for me to find out any differences in healthcare provided during sports events.

It sucks. It's a disgrace. And we can lay that at the feet of everyone who has voted for a certain party over the years, and probably also people who have supported less liberal members of the other party.

That said, the ambulance service is just a small cog in this problem. They're not the root of it. In other words, don't hate the player, hate the game.

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http://www.jt10000.com/

Maybe I'm wrong about this but don't most races have a basic medical tent for this and leave an ambulance for emergency treatment?

I understand your thought and it seems like a cold response. I don't know how it plays out if that EMT has to account for all the inventory on the ambulance by their superiors.

After having several occasions of landing hard on the pavement with significant road rash and shoulder separation I now keep my gear bag equipped with some of the basics. Things like Bactine, sanitary wipes, bandages, medical tape and gauze. It's not a bad thing to keep in the bag with all hope you or your friends will not ever need it. Turned out that I needed it when one of my friends clipped my front wheel last summer. I still had 20 miles to ride it out so there was plenty of blood all over the bike by the finish and a very sore shoulder (landed on the same separated shoulder.....ugh). I try to keep a single wipes in my bag while training.

Always a fun event to spray something on the wound and scrub it out good :-)

But you would think that event organizer(s) would have a first aid tent with those sorts of supplies.

I understand your feelings. AND perhaps the bedside manner (or more correctly roadside manner) left something to be desired....

But some of the other posters are correct. An ambulance is a lifesaving device for serious trauma.

Would it make good medical triage strategy if the ambulance was en route to the hospital with a person with NO life endangering issues and 10 minuted later a cyclist got creamed by a car and was presenting with a TBI and spinal injury???

What is wrong with our health care system is that there is an ENORMOUS amount of people using it that pay NOTHING and a much smaller minority that pay for what they use AND everyone else.

YES it sucks dog balls.

To you guys in the UK wondering why the US healthcare system is so messed up: in part, it's due to people like Jamie spouting nonsense - wrong facts, wrong analysis, etc.

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http://www.jt10000.com/

Wow, you sound like a really nice guy.

What you, and I suspect many others like you, don't seem to realise is that the whole insurance system is ripping you off regardless of any perceived scroungers (btw, only around 17% of adults in the USA are uninsured - hardly an "ENORMOUS amount").
The uninsured aren't the ones hiking prices up, they are a drop in the bucket.

The profiteering nature of the private companies that facilitate and run the hospitals means that the price of many standard treatments in the USA is as much as 8x higher than the cost of performing the same treatment on the NHS. This is then reflected in the insurance premiums paid by people like you, with an additional markup in order for the insurance companies to make money.
If you moved to a publicly funded system and took the private companies and their two levels of unnecessary profit out of the equation, then healthcare would only cost around half of what it does now and everybody would be covered.

That bastard.

He probably should have advised you to Walgreens or Walmart, both of which have lower prices than Rite Aid

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Take a short break from ST and read my blog:
http://tri-banter.blogspot.com/

I would actually direct your anger at the RD (if it is warranted at all). Having an ambulance onsite is nice, but there should have been First Aid facilities to deal with more minor injuries and that should have been communicated to all athletes before hand. The races I do have this.

Also I am going to assume the Vol Fireman was actually a first aider correct? So he/she should have assessed the seriousness of the injury first and if it was troubling passed that info on to the EMTs. And as any first aider out there, likely should have a first aid kit in their car (I do).

It seems there were many failures along the way, with the EMT being the least.

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Ian

Same thing happened to me at a race lace month. Got the bandaids, neosporin, they cleaned my road rash and sent me home. I didn't expect anything more to tell you the truth. I got me some bandages, neosporin etc... I did end up paying close to $300-$400 for various supplies over the entire week - Tegaderm is fucking expensive!

What did you expect really? Apart from keeping the wounds clean and covered for a week there's nothing else much to do but be patient and wait for it to heal.

"I would actually direct your anger at the RD (if it is warranted at all)."

i don't see where any anger is warranted. but i do see an opportunity for improvement. you bet the RD pays for this. probably $1000, maybe $1,500, for the medical services on-site. i have paid for this dozens of times. but i've never scrutinized it, that i remember. maybe it's an opportunity to lay out what the expectations are for the company providing medical services.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman