One particular day, wrote Appleby, the Pathways center in Wisconsin handled 70 calls. Most were in-house Kaiser calls dealing with patient transfers. Ambulances were sent for some. One caller refused an ambulance. A few were determined to be non-emergencies and the callers were sent back to Kaiser's appointment system or to a telephone advice nurse.
Many patients can and do.
But some may refuse to contact 911 or pass out first. The object of Pathways is to reduce what Kaiser officials say is emergency care overuse. After a two years of trials in Colorado ambulance usage there is down 17 percent. In some areas, patients will be directly connected to Pathways with the push of a button on the telephone. In other states, only non-emergency situations, such as transferring patients from one hospital to another, will be handled by Pathways.