Emergency medical communication in North Carolina: past, present, and future challenges

Ifthe best equipped ambulance arrives unannounced at the emergency room door and the hospital is unprepared for the arrival, the system has broken down and patients can be lost because of it. There must be good reliable communications between the person reporting the accident, the dispatcher of the appropriate vehicle and personnel, the police and fire departments (when called for), the hospital emergency department, the medical specialists available to the hospital and those bigger hospitals (trauma centers) to which the patient might in some cases be sent directly.