While we are taking steps to make improvements / bring alternative ambulance and paramedic services to our community, for the time being, here is some important information to keep in mind:
At the moment there are two types of ambulance services available in our community:
· Private
· Public
When you request an ambulance from a private medical services establishment, the cost of an ambulance transfer will depend on the place from where you are traveling to the place you are transferring from. On some occasions, these establishments have agreements with other private hospitals to send the ambulances directly to that hospital.
There are different institutions that offer the public ambulance service (Mexican Red Cross, Civil Protection, Public Medical Insurance Medical Institute, etc.). In our community we have Civil Protection who provides us with the ambulance transfer service under the following conditions:
· If your transfer by ambulance is to a public hospital, civil protection should charge you a small recovery fee (this is because some costs are not covered by the government).
· If you request to be taken to a private hospital, the civil protection ambulance will have a higher cost, this is because, as a government agency, their job is to transfer patients to public government hospitals, by not fulfilling this function they can charge you for the service as if it were a private ambulance. These public institutions do not work with an insurance company, payment must be made directly, and they do not offer an invoice.
Some rules to keep in mind about the ambulance service in Mexico:
When you request the services of a private ambulance and request to be taken to a hospital of your choice, if the certified paramedic on board the unit decides that your life is in danger, he will take you to the nearest hospital.
· Sometimes hospitals are full and/or do not have enough staff to care for all patients. This could result in your ambulance being turned away or placed on hold until a space becomes available. In these cases, the paramedics may decide to take you to another hospital even if you do not agree, because your safety is more important.
· In a larger town, when we call 911 and request an ambulance, the operator will take your location into account to decide which ambulance to send. In our community we have limited services. Keep in mind that the state of the roads, the limited availability of units and the language barrier can be factors that determine how quickly the ambulance will arrive at your location.
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