Now You
Can Get
new
a Doctor Any Time
What do you do when your family physician is away?
The emergency medical plan is providing the answer.
by Howard Earl
"I
I 've got to get a doctor. My wife is
dying!" the distraught man
screamed into the telephone.
At the Raleigh, N. C, telephone ex
change, an operator connected the man
with the local emergency medical call
service. The service had a doctor at the
man's home within an hour. His wife was
whisked to the hospital, saving her life.
In Indianapolis, a busy mother heard a
commotion and hurried into the living
room to find her six-year-old son at the
foot of the stairs, bleeding from the
mouth and unconscious. She rushed to
the telephone but couldn't reach the
family doctor.
Frightened, she dialed the operator
and explained her predicament. In an
instant, a pleasant voice asked: "May I
help you?" And within minutes the tele
phone answering service in Indianapolis
had a doctor on his way.
All this is no happenstance. It's a well
developed plan, the result of intensive
study by the American Medical Associa
tion and local medical societies which de
cided to remedy mounting complaints
that doctors were not available in emer
gencies. Today there are more than 710
such emergency plans operating through
out the country, serving more than 91
million people. No city of more than
200,000 population is without the plan.
However, the size of a community has
little to do with the plan's effectiveness.
New York, Chicago, and Denver have
efficient programs, but so do many
smaller communities.
In Little Falls, N. Y., local physicians
ran a newspaper announcement advising
their patients what to do in an emer
gency: phone the hospital, which would
know whether their doctor was available
and, if not, what doctor was.
"Your physicians have made sure that
medical care will always be available to
you," said the announcement.
While emergency medical call plans
vary according to the size of a com
munity, they all have the same purpose
to guarantee that you can obtain a doc
tor any time of the day or night, any day
of the year. The systems are so efficient
that even in New York City, which
operates the largest emergency plan in
the country, it takes only seven or eight
minutes to have a doctor on his way.
The plan embodies three elements: a
group of physicians available for emer
gencies, an agency for contacting them,
and publicity to inform citizens how to
use the service.
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