It all started on a hot summer day. My local supermarket was selling generic Kool-pops — a box of 100 for about $5. I bought a couple boxes and started stocking the small refrigerator in our hospital’s EMS room that previously only carried ginger ale and orange and cranberry juice. The pops were a hit! My thinking was two fold As the EMS Coordinator, it was a way both to reward the hardworking EMS crews and it could help the hospital increase volume. Hot day, EMS responds to a motor vehicle accident. Patient, with neck or back pain, wants to get checked out at the hospital. The crew, in between several hospitals, thinks about how good a cool pop would taste, suggests our hospital as a transport destination.
Here in the Hartford area, we are hospital rich. Two big hospitals in the city two and a half miles apart. Three other hospitals in outer-laying towns all within 15 minutes. Not every patient has a specific hospital they want to go to. Those savvy about EMS know EMS often dictates patient destination. Treat EMS well, they will come, treat EMS badly, they will recommend their patients go elsewhere.*
No sooner than we started putting out kool pops then another hospital got into the act. They went big. A store sized Good humor ice cream case. Kool Pops are cool, but a Strawberry shortcake bar or an M&M ice cream cookie or a rocket pop, are quite another. The EMS food wars had begun.
Now over a decade later, one of the big hospitals in Hartford offers slushies, coffee, tea, hot chocolate, expressos, ice cream, oatmeal, Kind and Nutrigrain bars, and fresh fruits with an occasional pizza in the afternoon. Another offers Bubby seltzers, sandwiches, fruit, Oreo cookies, and fresh fruits as well. Another hospital, bagels, cereal, yogurts, chips, cookies, etc.
Our hospital (a state hospital) has been slow to keep up with the big boys, but we are making a commitment to up our game. I stopped buying the koolpops years ago when the generic boxes disappeared from the shelves. We just bought a regular sized fridge, along with a lock for the EMS room door to help keep hospital staff from raiding the supply when we start stocking it.
EMS deserves treats, hospitals need patients.
During EMS week some hospitals hold cookouts for EMS or bring in food trucks.
Where is this all headed?
Years from now, while I’m working a grille station, cooking up bacon and egg sandwiches for the morning EMS crews, across town another EMS coordinator will be displaying his newly learned sushi-making skills and a third, preparing bananas enflambe.
*Once a long time ago, a hospital posted a sign on the ambulance entrance doors at 10:00 AM. Any EMS crew caught stealing linen from the ED will be prosecuted. EMS takes hospital linen on a 1 for 1 exchange. Bring in a patient and leave their sheets, you can get a new sheet, bath blanket and towel, but no more. Sometimes when EMS is running low or it is exceptionally cold, they may take more. Why do they take it? To benefit their patients, not to sell the extra linen on eBay. Funny thing happened. EMS stopped transporting to that hospital. A quick boycott. By 5 that afternoon, the chastened hospital administrators had removed the sign.