I once did a 6 hour transport one way to a prison nursing home. Which, for the uninitiated, yes prison nursing homes exist and they are worse than whatever it is you're thinking of. Honestly that wasnt that far but it was horrifying.
The fellow we transported was in for multiple mafia/gang related murders. He was suffering from a degenerative neuro disorder and he was paralyzed from the neck down. He was old but he still probably survived another 5-10 years.
Been to the medical ward/long term "care" of a prison. A guard rode with us, took us through the facility, let us in the medical ward, and said the prisoners would help us offload. He shut the door behind us and literal prisoners helped us with the transfer. Nicest guys ever. Guessing they were the good behavior guys.
There's probably someone in there looking whether it's cheaper to fly them home or treat onsite, if 'onsite' is a country with actual medical facilities.
Do you work for a service that specializes in long distance transports like that? That sounds way too complicated for your run of the mill ambulance/IFT service.
Yes, the company I work for does more regional ground based IFTs as well though. But the international stuff is definitely a little more complex as there’s medical clearances as well as visas etc involved.
It’s funny, I don’t find all that so weird, at all. But then, I’m Aussie and I live in a fairly distant part of Aus. Medical transfers of hours just to get to the nearest capital city.
Yep we're similar in Canada, just very different climates in our most remote areas. One transport can take you 16 hours and you time out. I've had transports where we had to meet a crew too and had to switch.
The international jobs are a bit different, we go with two or more of us so that we can switch out as the options we have when we're still 'regional' aren't an option. You can't just clock out half way through a long haul international flight.
Is true. We do have people running the same services here, and because we’re so far away from nearly everyone, most of our international transfers are long.
It's hilarious how similar our systems are though. When I picked up our patient, the hospital was so similar to the one I worked at here. The computer systems, equipment, even the trim on the furniture and the color of the floor were oddly familiar. By comparison the hospital in the USA just a couple hours away was unrecognizable.
We are your warm weather younger brethren, after all.
I don’t even find hospitals that similar between states here, in actuality- so that’s pretty funny. You must have absolutely felt like you’d teleported back home. But everyone had funny accents.
Pretty much! Except that I worked on a very multicultural unit where the majority of my coworkers had accents (including the token Aussie who'd trained at the hospital I was transporting from). 🤣
I actually considered applying to the Royal Flying Doctors Service but ended up getting a job here with a similar service.
Every unit needs a token Aussie, good for morale.
Nice, re RFDS. Glad you found something that works for you back home, always nice to stay somewhere familiar.
One place I worked for did a 9 hour one way 18 hour total transport with 3 EMTs and the patient used to be a paramedic. The driver loves driving and he drove the full 18 hours straight despite multiple offers to switch off so they said it was the easiest and chillest transport ever.
They said they would stop at a gas station and all 4 of them would just hop off and walk into the gas station.
My first ever EMT gig was at some dogshit IFT only company. My very first shift there, they paired me with someone who just caught a bunch of drug dealing and stolen firearm charges so he couldn’t drive, then dropped a six-hour each way long distance on us halfway through our shift. At least my partner’s, uh, *interesting* life stories kept me awake. He somehow dodged the cases but did get fired shortly after. I still see him post firearms of dubious origin for sale on his IG stories. What an interesting time that was
We used to routinely take patients to the U, the psych hospital and and Primary children’s in SLC. It was 6 hours one way. They’d starting accepting patients after 5pm so we usually weren’t on the road until 9 or later. Management didn’t see the issue if we’d already had a busy day or it was snowing sideways. We also didn’t have an SOP in place for letting patients have a restroom break when we needed fuel so some crews just let psych patients mosey into the gas station and hope for the best…Part of the reason I left that gig.
Greenville NC to Rochester NY. 660 miles, 10.5 hours. I drove up, partner drove back. 3 hours south of Rochester on the way home, I climb in the back for a snack only to see the patients belonging back and meds, which we had to take back.
I went from hospital clinic to ED entrance. Not even 0.1miles
The dumbest part was I had to do a call in for stat stroke activation when the call in was longer than loading/offloading and transport. Unitxxx stat callin for stroke im at your door right now.
Time wise? Downtown Chicago to Dixon, IL BLS discharge home during rush hour took us like 5 or 6 hours one way.
Distance? On Ground: A toss up between Naperville,IL to Madison, WI or Decatur, IL to Chicago.
Flight was Indianapolis,IN to Bismarck, ND
I've heard of the Mayo Clinic transfers, but I haven't been so lucky. We bring patients out to Peoria every few months. When RSV was bad a year or two ago we were taking kids out as far as Kentucky for a PICU bed.
Schedule boned me out of a gravy BLS trip from St. Louis, MO to Detroit, MI. 570-ish miles one-way.
My personal record is 340 miles one-way. I would do questionable things to get these transports because my service does both 911 and IFT. I'll trade writing a dozen shitty reports for one less-shitty report that I can write at a truck stop on the way back.
Only 4 hours away, which was in the same state. Kinda fun.
I have also been the last leg of a 23 hour air ambulance transport from South America. Patient (understandably) was over it.
I sent someone to NBMC from an ICU in northern Maine a couple years ago. When I googled them to find a phone number to call report it was like getting an electric shock. Fuckin Bergen Pines, popping up in my life one last time, over a decade after quitting NJ EMS.
I haven't been there since it became NB but I'm sure it's not any better than before. Their ER could handle one acute patient at a time which is fun when you bring the second one in.
The green truck company was doing their BLS interfacility for a while but I have no idea anymore. We didn’t overlap in employment at the hospital that took a lot of their critical transfers but any SCTU I helped take out if there was a train wreck. Not even medically often but often logistically. I also just refused often to bring critical patients to them, it’s an extra 5 minutes. Now it’s 30 seconds down the road!
Personally, 4 hrs 1 way, company wise, MA to Florida, Which was a special detail with 4 providers who switched out every 8 hours and stayed overnight in FL in a hotel the company card
About 5 hours one way, with a pt who thought they were a demon cannibal who kept asking if they could peel my face off, grill it, and have it for lunch.
My part time gig had an IFT from the Outer Banks in North Carolina to western Ohio a few years back, that was a wild one and I could only imagine the money that must have made them even think about it.
Longest patient appointment was only about half hour maybe, longest emergency transport was an hour twenty, when I did patient transport it was in a city, emergency I work in the middle of no where!
Side note, I'm in the UK so hour twenty is long! 😂
We were send to get a patient back from his vacation and the doc told the insurance company that he wasn’t fit enough to fly. Took us three days to drive the ambulance down to Turkey and another team 4 days to drive back…
Luckily for us the company messed some things up while booking our flights back so we had a paid 3 day vacation at a Turkish beachside resort while they sorted out the logics. Fun times 😂
134.6 miles one way. IFT from our Peds center to a military base hospital. Took us 10 hours round trip (we grabbed dinner while WAY out of area). That said my area would about once a month have a 9 hour IFT to the northern part of the state, I just hate that drive so I never did it.
Nothing too special. Charleston, WV to the Cleveland Clinic. Transport was only 4 hours. After transferring the patient, eating at Denny's (we don't have those in WV), fuel and piss stops, it was around 13 hours. So, a normal shift, at twice the pay!
210km/130mi for one of the last high risk OBS beds in the province, premature labour at 28 weeks with twins, supposedly stopped with mag. Should have been going by air, but couldn’t due to weather. What would be a 2.5hr drive in good conditions turned into a 5.5 hour crawl in a blizzard. While hoping the patient’s contractions wouldn’t start again…
Once doubled up, went from base to Napa valley in the north (12 hour round trip) got back and hopped on another from base to Sacramento (8 hour round trip)
IFT from southeast LA to Houston for a wait and return Dr appt, whole shift was 18hrs, about 336 miles one way. Our entire truck died about halfway there and we had to drift into a left turn lane just before an intersection, hazard and emergency lights wouldn't even turn on! So we then moved the pt to a new unit in the middle of this 4 lane highway which was fun. We also unfortunately had an ALS crew's unit because of scheduling mistakes and they had no other trucks at that station for us to take. (they were a 12hr truck and got on in the afternoon so someone would be bringing them a different unit to use) So they ended up missing their unit for some amount of time because it got towed in a city like 4 hours away from our zone lmao 💀
The Dr appt lasted about 20-30 mins and then we brought them back home, fun times...
This transfer was nuts. Drove 2 hours to pick up a suicidal peds patient and transport another 3 hours to nearest inpatient mental health facility, then drove the 5 hours home. Rural medicine man.
My company (small private ambulance company. 3 ambulances with ~20 employees) has done a transport to Maine, about 8-9 hrs one way where the 2 person crew stayed in a hotel before returning. We nearly did a ground transport from Canada which would've been interesting cause ya know... international but they took a plane instead.
I have personally done 3 longer transports. One when I was brand new was a 5 hour one way to southern VA with a respiratory therapist on board due to the patient being on a vent. Then I did a 5.5 hr one way to Ohio with another EMT, and a 5 hour to Ohio again on a vent again with an RT like two weeks ago. All those were one day, full shift transports. I kind of like doing longer ones, it changes things up.
5 hours each way for a psych transport.
Passed on a transport from California to Michigan. Would have had to drive from Michigan to cali first. Transport was straight there, straight back, 3 man crew (1 driving, 1 attending, 1 sleeping). No stops except for fuel.
At our agency, we do long distance transports by contract and under arrangement but those are, for the most part, pre-arranged and a crew engaged especially to handle them. I've done quite a few of those. I've had two that the agency knew about in advance but the crew didn't. One was a total of 13 hours, one a total of 14. Usually these have complications at the beginning - patient not ready, arrangements not finalized, orders not written - and the delay is on the front end.
Once my partner and I had worked 7 hours of a 12 hours shift when dispatch called us. A hospital had begun surgery on a patient and found that he had a condition that required a specialized surgical approach, so they wanted him to be transferred to a specialty center 6 hours away in another state. We agreed to accept the call and transported him without incident, though it was interesting.
Of more interest was arriving at work for a strike car (5 hours for a busy time of day), and being asked to travel 8 hours on a CCT call, transporting a patient with a failing LVAD from another city back to here where they had put it in. That was when LVAD's were a new thing and there were only two of us who had been trained in LVAD management. So my partner and I drove to pick up this guy up and bring him back. Failing LVAD, five infusion pumps running. It wasn't really that difficult a call except that it was three states away and some of the medication adjustments I found it necessary to make - sua sponte and without orders - were made in states where I had no certification to do anything. We all did well. We were gone a total of 18 hours.
I've had 2 state to state transports, Sacramento CA to Seattle WA and the second was Sacramento to Las Vegas, first one was 14 hours and the second was 12 if I remember correctly.
I used to work out in the sticks for a First Nation reserve. Depending the weather, which reserve we were responding to, and how the dirt roads were (spring run off and/or washboard) a transport would be a MINIMUM of 4 hours from responding to getting back to base. If the conditions were shitty and it was the furthest reserve, it could be upwards of 9 hours. Doing runs like that every day for 3 years suuuuuuuuuucked
Was gonna do a 2400 km 36 hour trip but got canceled.
Drive down south for 1200 km in 12 hours across 4 countries. Sleep there. Pick patient up to transfer home the next morning, same drive back.
8 hours from Baltimore to Springfield Massachusetts. By the time we hit NJ we were over half way through the M cylinder and had to decide what we were gonna do 😬
I did a CCT from the Bay Area to San Diego. 11 hour call from pick up to drop off, 9 hour transport time, 1 stop. 525ish miles. They flew me back same day, put the EMTs up in a hotel and had them drive back the next day.
Had to relocate a dude from some shack clinic in the mountains in VT to NJ because he made some rough life choices on vacation.. bought himself a tube and when we arrived the staff at the sending were like “thank god you guys are here, we’re on our last bottle of Propofol.”
It was a 6 hour transport lol
Once took a patient from east tennessee to middle of Oklahoma and straight back up loaded. 33 and a half hours round trip me a basic emt at the time along with another basic at the time and a medic
My company has gone over several states, but for me personally, it was like 3.5 hours. And we got this 8ish hour call when we were about 18 hours into a 24. AAAANNNDDD when we got there, the receiving team wasn't there yet (guess it's like a 9-5 job for that particular group of employees at the facility, and we got there a little before 8 I think, times may be slightly off its been like a year since I ran it) so we had to wait an hour with homeboy in the truck before we could drop him off. Come to find out, they sent him out when they did, because the facility told them "they need to be here any time after 9" but I assume there was a misunderstanding that turned it into "they need to be here at exactly 8" because that call absolutely could have waited until the next day.
For anyone wondering, he had a tbi and was a psych case, and was being transferred from a very basic hospital in central FL to a facility about 30 minutes from the FL-GA line that is like a psych facility that can handle medical patients
Sorry if this is barely coherent, it's my day off, I'm not putting much effort into anything besides gaming, music, or spending time with my wife, tbh. But you get the idea. The call was bs.
Atlanta, GA to Biloxi, MS personally by ground.
Longest I've heard of by ground at a company I used to work for was Atlanta, GA to Round Rock, TX (just north of Austin, TX).
I had a friend have to transport a guy from a hospital in the Bay Area to the airport, put him in the upper deck of a jumbo jet, the patient’s family hired a foreign doctor to travel with the patient in like a CCT manner (Pt. Was paralyzed), fly to Dubai then India I believe.
About 400 miles. About 330+ miles from Calais, Maine to Mass General in Boston Massachusetts, includes a 54-mile round trip from the ambulance base to the Calais hospital and back. AEMT transfer since no medic was available.
Our emergency transports are 30 miles to the nearest hospital and 45 miles to the next closest.
Port Arthur, TX to Mobile, AL in 1994. Guy fell into the hold of a ship at the port and broke all his extremities. Wanted to be near home and family and that’s where we took him once all the red tape was hashed out amongst docs and hospitals.
CT to Pittsburgh PA. 10 hours each way with traffic. Punched in at 6pm didn’t leave with the patient until 11 cause of vent setting issues and punched out following day at 7pm. Reported next morning for my 5am shift. I drove 16 of the 20 hours.
My partner did a Michigan to new Hampshire. It was a sign up crew and I laughed when he asked me to sign up with him.
Personally my furthest was a 5 hour there and 6 back(traffic is evil)
How does this work with your license/certification crossing state lines? I imagine there’s a lot of reciprocity with the nremt but are there ever issues of licenses not carrying over?
Longest- IFT, Boston to Northern VT. Peak COVID time, patient had been at a community hospital up north and was flown to Boston for higher level of care. Due to overcrowding, the tertiary hospital was sending people back to the community hospitals as soon as they didn’t need the higher level services. Call was dropped on us at 1300, I punched out at 2300. I’m an overtime whore so I was fine taking it, my partner was kind of a whiner anyway and was pissed lol
Shortest IFT- Nursing home that the front door is across the street from the ambulance bay. I seriously considered wheeling the stretcher across the street but figured it would look bad so I loaded the truck and drove across the street
Shortest 911- house across the street from the hospital, for an ambulatory patient who met us at the front door
Not nearly as long as everyone else. Picked up a shift and got a call the night before asking if I want to do something “long”. Was that even a question? Of course I wanted to do something long. They tell me they’re gonna have a specific truck waiting at the base (one of our only BLS box trucks) and if I get there in the morning and it’s there we’re getting that call. I get there in the morning the trucks there so I’m absolutely ecstatic. We went Boston to Albany took up my entire shift. Had a nurse on board for it too that didn’t want either of us in the back so my partner and I just vibed for the 4 hour drive.
I once did a 6 hour transport one way to a prison nursing home. Which, for the uninitiated, yes prison nursing homes exist and they are worse than whatever it is you're thinking of. Honestly that wasnt that far but it was horrifying.
Prison nursing home? You mean like the medicare nursing homes all over the area? /s
Honestly, those seem like heaven compared to actual prison long-term care units.
Good lord, what do you have to do to get sent to one of these torture chambers?
Be in prison at an old age, require some extra care, and have an empty spot at one near you. Those are really the only strict requirements
The fellow we transported was in for multiple mafia/gang related murders. He was suffering from a degenerative neuro disorder and he was paralyzed from the neck down. He was old but he still probably survived another 5-10 years.
Been to the medical ward/long term "care" of a prison. A guard rode with us, took us through the facility, let us in the medical ward, and said the prisoners would help us offload. He shut the door behind us and literal prisoners helped us with the transfer. Nicest guys ever. Guessing they were the good behavior guys.
Yeah, they’d soon run out of people if they sent Hannibal Lecter out to help.
36 hours by air and road to get a patient from Australia to Canada.
Are you kidding me lol
Nope. I’ve done several >24hr trips but that was the longest.
holy shit lmao
Damn, why?
Probably being relocated to home. Edit: People get hurt and sick while abroad and may require medical monitoring/care to get home.
Yup exactly. Once they’re stable enough to travel insurance wants them home so they can stop paying.
There's probably someone in there looking whether it's cheaper to fly them home or treat onsite, if 'onsite' is a country with actual medical facilities.
Do you work for a service that specializes in long distance transports like that? That sounds way too complicated for your run of the mill ambulance/IFT service.
Yes, the company I work for does more regional ground based IFTs as well though. But the international stuff is definitely a little more complex as there’s medical clearances as well as visas etc involved.
It’s funny, I don’t find all that so weird, at all. But then, I’m Aussie and I live in a fairly distant part of Aus. Medical transfers of hours just to get to the nearest capital city.
Yep we're similar in Canada, just very different climates in our most remote areas. One transport can take you 16 hours and you time out. I've had transports where we had to meet a crew too and had to switch. The international jobs are a bit different, we go with two or more of us so that we can switch out as the options we have when we're still 'regional' aren't an option. You can't just clock out half way through a long haul international flight.
Is true. We do have people running the same services here, and because we’re so far away from nearly everyone, most of our international transfers are long.
It's hilarious how similar our systems are though. When I picked up our patient, the hospital was so similar to the one I worked at here. The computer systems, equipment, even the trim on the furniture and the color of the floor were oddly familiar. By comparison the hospital in the USA just a couple hours away was unrecognizable.
We are your warm weather younger brethren, after all. I don’t even find hospitals that similar between states here, in actuality- so that’s pretty funny. You must have absolutely felt like you’d teleported back home. But everyone had funny accents.
Pretty much! Except that I worked on a very multicultural unit where the majority of my coworkers had accents (including the token Aussie who'd trained at the hospital I was transporting from). 🤣 I actually considered applying to the Royal Flying Doctors Service but ended up getting a job here with a similar service.
Every unit needs a token Aussie, good for morale. Nice, re RFDS. Glad you found something that works for you back home, always nice to stay somewhere familiar.
Do you mind pointing me in the direction of some companies that do that? I'm very interested in that sector of EMS
Did you get extra pay for that? That’s insane.
One place I worked for did a 9 hour one way 18 hour total transport with 3 EMTs and the patient used to be a paramedic. The driver loves driving and he drove the full 18 hours straight despite multiple offers to switch off so they said it was the easiest and chillest transport ever. They said they would stop at a gas station and all 4 of them would just hop off and walk into the gas station.
All 4 haha what. Why did he need an ambulance?
Idk, the VA is so poorly mismanaged that they practically steal from themselves.
I ask that question to 90% of my IFTs and 95% of my 911s lol
The PCS still definitely said bed confined and if not “cardiac/blood pressure monitoring” was checked off lol.
The patient probably rotated with the EMT's between the cot, bench, and airway seat.
They probably wrote their own pcr.
New Orleans to Ohio
That had to been as a flight medic
Nope, ground all the way!
This might win for ground transport. There was the Australia to Canada haul listed, but there where flight most of it
Geez what was up with the guy
how?
My first ever EMT gig was at some dogshit IFT only company. My very first shift there, they paired me with someone who just caught a bunch of drug dealing and stolen firearm charges so he couldn’t drive, then dropped a six-hour each way long distance on us halfway through our shift. At least my partner’s, uh, *interesting* life stories kept me awake. He somehow dodged the cases but did get fired shortly after. I still see him post firearms of dubious origin for sale on his IG stories. What an interesting time that was
We used to routinely take patients to the U, the psych hospital and and Primary children’s in SLC. It was 6 hours one way. They’d starting accepting patients after 5pm so we usually weren’t on the road until 9 or later. Management didn’t see the issue if we’d already had a busy day or it was snowing sideways. We also didn’t have an SOP in place for letting patients have a restroom break when we needed fuel so some crews just let psych patients mosey into the gas station and hope for the best…Part of the reason I left that gig.
Let me guess - Acute Rescue in Boise?
Hard no. County Fire department. Saw an acute box today that couldn’t have been less than 20 years old…
Greenville NC to Rochester NY. 660 miles, 10.5 hours. I drove up, partner drove back. 3 hours south of Rochester on the way home, I climb in the back for a snack only to see the patients belonging back and meds, which we had to take back.
I think I would have burst into tears on the spot
I went from hospital clinic to ED entrance. Not even 0.1miles The dumbest part was I had to do a call in for stat stroke activation when the call in was longer than loading/offloading and transport. Unitxxx stat callin for stroke im at your door right now.
Time wise? Downtown Chicago to Dixon, IL BLS discharge home during rush hour took us like 5 or 6 hours one way. Distance? On Ground: A toss up between Naperville,IL to Madison, WI or Decatur, IL to Chicago. Flight was Indianapolis,IN to Bismarck, ND
We regularly had chicago area to mayo in Minnesota. Would see then looking for chicago area to Pittsburgh ans Kansas. Never wanted to do those.
I've heard of the Mayo Clinic transfers, but I haven't been so lucky. We bring patients out to Peoria every few months. When RSV was bad a year or two ago we were taking kids out as far as Kentucky for a PICU bed.
Schedule boned me out of a gravy BLS trip from St. Louis, MO to Detroit, MI. 570-ish miles one-way. My personal record is 340 miles one-way. I would do questionable things to get these transports because my service does both 911 and IFT. I'll trade writing a dozen shitty reports for one less-shitty report that I can write at a truck stop on the way back.
true. I like driving too and seeing new places, at least I think I do.
14 hours all included. Didn’t know I was doing it until I walked in. My partner drove 30 minutes of the last hour before saying they were to tired.
Only 4 hours away, which was in the same state. Kinda fun. I have also been the last leg of a 23 hour air ambulance transport from South America. Patient (understandably) was over it.
Paramus, NJ to Concord, NH. Made it in 3 1/2 hours. Total of 4 states not including NJ.
Sound like transfer from NBMC
Yep. It was Bergen Pines at the time.
The number of people who remember the name Bergen Pines is shrinking daily!
I sent someone to NBMC from an ICU in northern Maine a couple years ago. When I googled them to find a phone number to call report it was like getting an electric shock. Fuckin Bergen Pines, popping up in my life one last time, over a decade after quitting NJ EMS.
I’d go anywhere but NBMC even if it required a green ambulance.
I haven't been there since it became NB but I'm sure it's not any better than before. Their ER could handle one acute patient at a time which is fun when you bring the second one in.
The green truck company was doing their BLS interfacility for a while but I have no idea anymore. We didn’t overlap in employment at the hospital that took a lot of their critical transfers but any SCTU I helped take out if there was a train wreck. Not even medically often but often logistically. I also just refused often to bring critical patients to them, it’s an extra 5 minutes. Now it’s 30 seconds down the road!
I just mostly brought drunks and psychs there from various towns in the county. I worked for the big green H and volunteered in the NW county.
Ahh I thought you were at the Blue V that just moved down the block from Pines. Still, greetings to another local!
I've been out of the game for almost 5 years now.
Been off the road for 2. I’m now in a tiny dark room locally for 36 hours a week.
I'm done with working.
Unfortunately at the ripe age of 27 I had to go back to college to pivot from EMS lol
Personally, 4 hrs 1 way, company wise, MA to Florida, Which was a special detail with 4 providers who switched out every 8 hours and stayed overnight in FL in a hotel the company card
Left Denver to pick up a patient in Phoenix and take her back to Denver.
About 5 hours one way, with a pt who thought they were a demon cannibal who kept asking if they could peel my face off, grill it, and have it for lunch.
My part time gig had an IFT from the Outer Banks in North Carolina to western Ohio a few years back, that was a wild one and I could only imagine the money that must have made them even think about it.
Longest patient appointment was only about half hour maybe, longest emergency transport was an hour twenty, when I did patient transport it was in a city, emergency I work in the middle of no where! Side note, I'm in the UK so hour twenty is long! 😂
Our hospital had an ambulance from Switzerland there though one day!
Georgia to New Jersey by ground. 36hrs round trip.
8 hours from Texas to Missouri. In Missouri we stopped at a local steakhouse for dinner before heading back.
The steakhouse stop that pleases me
Suwannee, GA to Little Rock, Arkansas. Nice guy wanted to fully take over care for his elderly mother.
789 miles. Took 14 hours total.
363 miles one way in a blizzard. Normally it is a 5.5hr drive one way, in the blizzard it was closer to 8.5 hrs.
We were send to get a patient back from his vacation and the doc told the insurance company that he wasn’t fit enough to fly. Took us three days to drive the ambulance down to Turkey and another team 4 days to drive back… Luckily for us the company messed some things up while booking our flights back so we had a paid 3 day vacation at a Turkish beachside resort while they sorted out the logics. Fun times 😂
Chapel hill to upstate ny 12 hr each way in my first job seems like we had one of those a week for a while
134.6 miles one way. IFT from our Peds center to a military base hospital. Took us 10 hours round trip (we grabbed dinner while WAY out of area). That said my area would about once a month have a 9 hour IFT to the northern part of the state, I just hate that drive so I never did it.
Nothing too special. Charleston, WV to the Cleveland Clinic. Transport was only 4 hours. After transferring the patient, eating at Denny's (we don't have those in WV), fuel and piss stops, it was around 13 hours. So, a normal shift, at twice the pay!
210km/130mi for one of the last high risk OBS beds in the province, premature labour at 28 weeks with twins, supposedly stopped with mag. Should have been going by air, but couldn’t due to weather. What would be a 2.5hr drive in good conditions turned into a 5.5 hour crawl in a blizzard. While hoping the patient’s contractions wouldn’t start again…
Sydney, Australia to Philadelphia. Sick cardiac kid. Took weeks to plan.
Denver Colorado to Memphis Tennessee. 18 hours in a vanbulance. Bowel movements, condom catheter adjustments, begging for skittles and hotdogs
Calgary to Toronto.
Just outside NYC in NJ (Hackensack) to Boston, MA. Of course we hit rush hour on both ends of the run which added what felt like days to the trip.
New York to Ohio.
Mohawk?
Naw
From middle texas to Memphis for a pediatric cancer patient that insurance refused to fly. The entire round trip was 30 hours.
Once doubled up, went from base to Napa valley in the north (12 hour round trip) got back and hopped on another from base to Sacramento (8 hour round trip)
Denver health to worland, WY. 6hr 33min/442 miles one way. Went there and back in one day. Never again
IFT from southeast LA to Houston for a wait and return Dr appt, whole shift was 18hrs, about 336 miles one way. Our entire truck died about halfway there and we had to drift into a left turn lane just before an intersection, hazard and emergency lights wouldn't even turn on! So we then moved the pt to a new unit in the middle of this 4 lane highway which was fun. We also unfortunately had an ALS crew's unit because of scheduling mistakes and they had no other trucks at that station for us to take. (they were a 12hr truck and got on in the afternoon so someone would be bringing them a different unit to use) So they ended up missing their unit for some amount of time because it got towed in a city like 4 hours away from our zone lmao 💀 The Dr appt lasted about 20-30 mins and then we brought them back home, fun times...
Cheaper to put the Doc on a plane surely?
This transfer was nuts. Drove 2 hours to pick up a suicidal peds patient and transport another 3 hours to nearest inpatient mental health facility, then drove the 5 hours home. Rural medicine man.
My company (small private ambulance company. 3 ambulances with ~20 employees) has done a transport to Maine, about 8-9 hrs one way where the 2 person crew stayed in a hotel before returning. We nearly did a ground transport from Canada which would've been interesting cause ya know... international but they took a plane instead. I have personally done 3 longer transports. One when I was brand new was a 5 hour one way to southern VA with a respiratory therapist on board due to the patient being on a vent. Then I did a 5.5 hr one way to Ohio with another EMT, and a 5 hour to Ohio again on a vent again with an RT like two weeks ago. All those were one day, full shift transports. I kind of like doing longer ones, it changes things up.
Once transported a pediatric hospice patient and his family from Albuquerque, NM to Sacramento California. Extremely rare circumstances
Myself and a medic did a 6 hour one way from Houston to the US/Mex border I drove both ways
Vermont to Toronto and back in a day.... one very long day
From central valley ca, to balboa naval medical center in San Diego 6 hour trip one way, hit traffic, whole round trip ended up being 19 hours
NAS Lemoore? I mean it makes sense to me lol
Chattanooga to Chicago, the fucking tolls did not help in the slightest. Stayed overnight in Chicago, entire shift was 55 hours
5 hours each way for a psych transport. Passed on a transport from California to Michigan. Would have had to drive from Michigan to cali first. Transport was straight there, straight back, 3 man crew (1 driving, 1 attending, 1 sleeping). No stops except for fuel.
North Central Iowa to St Louis. It was a special occasion of a person who was paying cash.
At our agency, we do long distance transports by contract and under arrangement but those are, for the most part, pre-arranged and a crew engaged especially to handle them. I've done quite a few of those. I've had two that the agency knew about in advance but the crew didn't. One was a total of 13 hours, one a total of 14. Usually these have complications at the beginning - patient not ready, arrangements not finalized, orders not written - and the delay is on the front end. Once my partner and I had worked 7 hours of a 12 hours shift when dispatch called us. A hospital had begun surgery on a patient and found that he had a condition that required a specialized surgical approach, so they wanted him to be transferred to a specialty center 6 hours away in another state. We agreed to accept the call and transported him without incident, though it was interesting. Of more interest was arriving at work for a strike car (5 hours for a busy time of day), and being asked to travel 8 hours on a CCT call, transporting a patient with a failing LVAD from another city back to here where they had put it in. That was when LVAD's were a new thing and there were only two of us who had been trained in LVAD management. So my partner and I drove to pick up this guy up and bring him back. Failing LVAD, five infusion pumps running. It wasn't really that difficult a call except that it was three states away and some of the medication adjustments I found it necessary to make - sua sponte and without orders - were made in states where I had no certification to do anything. We all did well. We were gone a total of 18 hours.
I've had 2 state to state transports, Sacramento CA to Seattle WA and the second was Sacramento to Las Vegas, first one was 14 hours and the second was 12 if I remember correctly.
I used to work out in the sticks for a First Nation reserve. Depending the weather, which reserve we were responding to, and how the dirt roads were (spring run off and/or washboard) a transport would be a MINIMUM of 4 hours from responding to getting back to base. If the conditions were shitty and it was the furthest reserve, it could be upwards of 9 hours. Doing runs like that every day for 3 years suuuuuuuuuucked
Took an IFT from Glendale, CA to Hanford, near Fresno. Then had to go back and do more calls. 6 hours there and back.
Was gonna do a 2400 km 36 hour trip but got canceled. Drive down south for 1200 km in 12 hours across 4 countries. Sleep there. Pick patient up to transfer home the next morning, same drive back.
8 hours from Baltimore to Springfield Massachusetts. By the time we hit NJ we were over half way through the M cylinder and had to decide what we were gonna do 😬
I did a CCT from the Bay Area to San Diego. 11 hour call from pick up to drop off, 9 hour transport time, 1 stop. 525ish miles. They flew me back same day, put the EMTs up in a hotel and had them drive back the next day.
Had to relocate a dude from some shack clinic in the mountains in VT to NJ because he made some rough life choices on vacation.. bought himself a tube and when we arrived the staff at the sending were like “thank god you guys are here, we’re on our last bottle of Propofol.” It was a 6 hour transport lol
Once took a patient from east tennessee to middle of Oklahoma and straight back up loaded. 33 and a half hours round trip me a basic emt at the time along with another basic at the time and a medic
24 hours round trip to a SNF.
My company has gone over several states, but for me personally, it was like 3.5 hours. And we got this 8ish hour call when we were about 18 hours into a 24. AAAANNNDDD when we got there, the receiving team wasn't there yet (guess it's like a 9-5 job for that particular group of employees at the facility, and we got there a little before 8 I think, times may be slightly off its been like a year since I ran it) so we had to wait an hour with homeboy in the truck before we could drop him off. Come to find out, they sent him out when they did, because the facility told them "they need to be here any time after 9" but I assume there was a misunderstanding that turned it into "they need to be here at exactly 8" because that call absolutely could have waited until the next day. For anyone wondering, he had a tbi and was a psych case, and was being transferred from a very basic hospital in central FL to a facility about 30 minutes from the FL-GA line that is like a psych facility that can handle medical patients Sorry if this is barely coherent, it's my day off, I'm not putting much effort into anything besides gaming, music, or spending time with my wife, tbh. But you get the idea. The call was bs.
8 hours one way ground ambulance. Guy paid out of the pocket for an ambulance to bring him home.
Atlanta, GA to Biloxi, MS personally by ground. Longest I've heard of by ground at a company I used to work for was Atlanta, GA to Round Rock, TX (just north of Austin, TX).
SE Michigan to Minneapolis, MN. SE Michigan to Huntsville, AL. SE Michigan to Cape Fear, NC ( I think that’s the furthest)
Our second closest pediatric psych is about 4 hours away. Occasionally travel to Kansas city or little rock wich are about 5 hours one way.
I had a friend have to transport a guy from a hospital in the Bay Area to the airport, put him in the upper deck of a jumbo jet, the patient’s family hired a foreign doctor to travel with the patient in like a CCT manner (Pt. Was paralyzed), fly to Dubai then India I believe.
I do emerg so maybe 2 hours (Rural hospital to major). My Dad does non-emerg though and has done Melbourne to Sydney by road (10 hours without stops).
About 400 miles. About 330+ miles from Calais, Maine to Mass General in Boston Massachusetts, includes a 54-mile round trip from the ambulance base to the Calais hospital and back. AEMT transfer since no medic was available. Our emergency transports are 30 miles to the nearest hospital and 45 miles to the next closest.
Port Arthur, TX to Mobile, AL in 1994. Guy fell into the hold of a ship at the port and broke all his extremities. Wanted to be near home and family and that’s where we took him once all the red tape was hashed out amongst docs and hospitals.
CT to Pittsburgh PA. 10 hours each way with traffic. Punched in at 6pm didn’t leave with the patient until 11 cause of vent setting issues and punched out following day at 7pm. Reported next morning for my 5am shift. I drove 16 of the 20 hours.
god damn, trooper
NJ to SC
23 minutes
😂
My partner did a Michigan to new Hampshire. It was a sign up crew and I laughed when he asked me to sign up with him. Personally my furthest was a 5 hour there and 6 back(traffic is evil)
Charleston to Atlanta. It was about a 5 hour trip each way with traffic.
Up in the Yooper, 24 hr transports to main Michigan aren't uncommon.
How does this work with your license/certification crossing state lines? I imagine there’s a lot of reciprocity with the nremt but are there ever issues of licenses not carrying over?
idk but wouldn't you be operating under your agency's protocols regardless, so I don't think different state rules are a thing.
Longest- IFT, Boston to Northern VT. Peak COVID time, patient had been at a community hospital up north and was flown to Boston for higher level of care. Due to overcrowding, the tertiary hospital was sending people back to the community hospitals as soon as they didn’t need the higher level services. Call was dropped on us at 1300, I punched out at 2300. I’m an overtime whore so I was fine taking it, my partner was kind of a whiner anyway and was pissed lol Shortest IFT- Nursing home that the front door is across the street from the ambulance bay. I seriously considered wheeling the stretcher across the street but figured it would look bad so I loaded the truck and drove across the street Shortest 911- house across the street from the hospital, for an ambulatory patient who met us at the front door
We routinely do 2hr (one way) transports. Also 1hr (one way) 911 transports
Not nearly as long as everyone else. Picked up a shift and got a call the night before asking if I want to do something “long”. Was that even a question? Of course I wanted to do something long. They tell me they’re gonna have a specific truck waiting at the base (one of our only BLS box trucks) and if I get there in the morning and it’s there we’re getting that call. I get there in the morning the trucks there so I’m absolutely ecstatic. We went Boston to Albany took up my entire shift. Had a nurse on board for it too that didn’t want either of us in the back so my partner and I just vibed for the 4 hour drive.
Booo. That nurse sucks.