6 August 2006

How to get to hospital to have your baby if you don't have a car

| johnboy
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The Canberra Times had a front page splash today on a sad story involving a pregnant woman who called the hospital when her time came only to be told to get a taxi in to the hospital, and the taxi then never came.

Her heart stopped from blood loss and she had to be resuscitated when an ambulance was finally sent out to her.

So, should the monopoly taxi service be required to provide better quality of service? Or should the ambulance be consistently used in these situations.

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3. Or call the ambo and say “my wife is in labour 10 weeks premature and bleeding, and I need your help”

As sad as this whole event it, it is just another example of papers printing facts without reasons and subsequently the hospital and taxi service are effectly written down with 100% ownership of the problem. Actually more like taxi 99%, hospital 1%.

We live in a society where everyone else at fault and never our own (or even partly our own). If people actually thought about things beforehand and were actually prepared a little more events like these would happen far less.

Journalist today care more headlines and deadlines then actually building a story that can provoke thought and action.

How about asking the parents to be 2 simple questions :

1. If you’re wife was in labour a full ten weeks prematurely why wait an hour before calling the taxis service back ?
2. Didn’t you use your brain and think to call anyone else who might be able to provide you transport instead of just waiting for a taxi to arrive ?

Absent Diane11:09 am 08 Aug 06

JTK +5

James-T-Kirk10:49 am 08 Aug 06

Absent Dianne, I also hate the IVR.

I find that using the phrase “I like a cup of steaming hot coffee, and want to talk to a human” said to most IVR systems will confuse them enough to get to a physical person.

As for blaming the taxi service, it’s not heir problem. Just as when the local pizza shop gets your order wrong. They are yet another service provider with no service level contract with you, so buyer beware.

If my wife were approaching the position this lady was, I would have had a backup plan in place, friends, ambo, renting a car.

We need to be acountable for our own actions, and not blame others.

Absent Diane9:32 am 08 Aug 06

Sydney cabs do it…

Good call johnboy. But can Canberra Cabs integrate something as difficult as that into their already complex business processes? I doubt it.
Which is partly why I never bother with cabs anymore.

Absent Diane9:07 am 08 Aug 06

I agree with VYBerlinaV8… take responsibility. Contigency plans etc. It does indicate that the partner was at home at the time. Honestly if my partner fell preggers… I would make sure that I get car and license pronto.

Call on approach would solve most of the problems and i doubt anyone would object to having the call added to their flag fall.

Jazz, that is why I said MOST cabs in that situation – I am not naive enough to know there are quite a few less than useless drivers in the fleet as well, though (sour grapes time) none more useless than Canberra Cabs management. I was merely making the point that not ALL the blame falls on drivers – passengers can be equally as bad.

Jube,

The last 4 cabs i have called to pick either me, or drunk friends up from my house have turned up long enough to drive past my house (without stopping). I know this because we’ve had people standing in the driveway waiting. I don’t bother calling them anymore.

I think though, fair call if it’s their first time and well before due date, maybe they were unsure of the seriousness of the situation when they first called the hospital? It has been known that some women don’t believe it’s really happening until it’s too late to go anywhere.

chocolate teapot. hee hee

As sad as this is, I really think people need to take a little more responsibility. If your missus is in labour (and yes, my wife has been), you would be doing whatever you could to get to the hospital. This includes, friends, taxis, ambos, and ringing the hospital back to ask for more assistance.
That being said, cabs in this town are about as reliable as a chocolate teapot.

I saw the Canberra Times banner outside a newsagent yesterday:
“Woman survives horror ordeal taxi birth”
Thought to myself “well done – giving birth to a taxi must have hurt…”

Absent Diane11:47 am 07 Aug 06

i blame john stanhope’s grandstanding on non-local issues and lack of focus on ACT health in particular sex education.

Is the an angle that lays the blame on Simon Corbell – come on people, you’re not trying hard enough!

So many stuff ups here. the hospital must ahve thought the mother was just panicking nad not really in labour, tus suggesting a taxi. the taxi service is at fault – they should have said they weren’t coming, instead of constantly promising they were on their way. And the couple should have called the ambulance a little earlier, instead of waiting til she started bleeding. But this is all easy to say in hindsight. I think Canberra Cabs should pull out of this stupid voice recognition software, and phase it back in more slowly.

I can’t believe the hospital even suggested a taxi. At 10 weeks prem, that’s a high risk of baby and/or mother not surviving.

Why the bloody hell wouldn’t you call an ambulance in this situation? Did they call an ambulance? Is this not an emergency situation? So many questions.

Absent Diane10:13 am 07 Aug 06

there is no way that you can rely on a taxi service… they have no service level agreements with you – its a best effort thing.

If I was in that situation… I would be ringing friends frantically.

btw – I hate the new Taxi phone system (IVR??)

stupid couple should have driven themselves or called an ambulance. as much as i detest monopolists, you cant lay blame on the cab company here.

perfect example of bogan idiots blaming someone else for their own stupidity.

i bet this makes it to naomi tonight.

The ambo service definately should not be saying “oh, call a taxi”. So they’re stuffed.

Then again, the taxi service also should have shown up.

So everybody’s shit in this one! Except for the poor preggers woman, who’s been shafted twice (well, presumably three times, hence why she’s pregnant).

Having worked as a taxi driver and also in the base as a dispatcher/supervisor, it is the common practice of telephonists to advise someone in a medical emergency situation to call an ambulance, purely (as was stated in the article) because taxis are not there to provide that kind of service. It also states that they spoke to the auto booking service in the article, therefore there was no opportunity to advise them of this on at least the first call – there is an option of specifying special needs at the end of the message that will take you to an operator.

This part may be idle speculation, but in my experience MOST (not all) of the times when a taxi “didn’t show up” the taxi did, obeyed the RTA and Canb Cabs rule of not beeping their horn and no-one has come out of the house. Cab drivers are also under no obligation to leave their car due to previous instances of robbery in unattended cabs in driveways…

I am not defending the cab service (Mark Bramston recently fired me for allegedly putting down their new system during a phone call at work) but I think the blame in this case goes to the idiot at the hospital who advised them this way in the first instance – as it also states in the article, it is not common practice at the hospital to tell them to catch a cab.

The taxi company should have told the couple that they couldn’t transport a woman in labour for medical reasons and told them to call the ambo. God knows the ambo would have been there on time.

However, for Canberra Cabs to lay blame on the couple is BS. They had the opportunity at least twice to say “call an ambulance”.

When you’re in premature labour you tend not to think logically, particularly when your partner is bleeding heavily and you’re waiting on transportation that never came.

Ok, rant over.

I’ve heard quite a few first-hand accounts of taxis never arriving. Definitely time to review their arrangement.

another funny thing. the Canberra taxis are pretty aggressive drivers (I drive the airport routes every day), but sometimes you see a taxi not tailgating, not being pushy, not blasting through crowded situations… and then you see it’s a Queanbeyan taxi. Time to let them into the market perhaps?

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