Dear R/India, If you have ever called an ambulance on 108(or otherwise) how was your experience?

That's a basic misconception. Not every hospital is life saving. If a guy needs emergency tracheostomy or intubation, take him to hospital where they can do tracheostomy or you have a STEMI( heart attack), you need to be taken to PCI able hospital within golden hour, else you are just wasting uncertain moments. This are many things lacking in our healthcare which is beyond the scope of topic. It's different in cases of trauma, simple first aid or resuscitation hardly matters which are quite often done in PHC(primary health care).

The problem arises when the PHC can't or not equipped to handle the cases more than that. It doesn't matter how much fluids you push, if you don't have a surgeon to stop the bleeding or someone who can intubate.
We need a Tertiary hearth care to handle the cases. Most often, people with money have no problem choosing the type of care they need, it's the common folk who are often dumped to the government district hospitals, who have their own set of problems.

The hospital I worked in was a tertiary care government hospital and probably the major dumpsite for all emergency vehicles for my and surrounding districts. Our college cum hospital had casualty control room which was connected to the government one, where ambulance were mandated to relegate the condition of the patient, especially if he was referred from a private hospital( most often patient who are very sick and intubated are referred to our hospital as attenders are not willing to pay for ICU), and often informed about the services and facilities ( number of ICU beds) available in our hospital.

/r/india Thread Parent