Pretty much everything in that (((article))) is lies and fear porn. LA County as a whole uses the fire department for paramedic services. LA City has fire department ambulances and the rest of LA County (besides some select cities) uses contracted private ambulance companies, which are primarily EMT only and the fire department still shows up as Paramedics. 8 hours is not unheard of to unload a stable patient. Usually the fire department medics roll with the ambulance crew until they get to the ER. The fire department will give the charge nurse the report and then they are gone. Leaving the patient with the ambulance crew (EMT) inside of the ER. Alot of people call 911 because they think they will be seen faster and that is what holds up the ambulance crews. Most of the private companies that have the 911 contract for different area's are either (((AMR))) or owned by (((AMR))). They almost always get fined every month for late response times. They always have a 2nd company on contract to do overflow, but they rarely get used. LA County used to be 2nd only to Dallas-Fort Worth in terms of Medicare fraud. They might still be. But that means there are about 150 different private ambulance companies in LA County, with various amounts of resources, leeching off of dialysis and scheduled doctors appointments. Let alone inter-facility hospital contracts. They can and have been used in situations to provide emergency care in mass casualty incidents, that traditional resources for that area cannot handle. Most of those are EMT only but there are a fair amount of Paramedic units. That skeletor vampire looking medical director bitch is just trying to double down on the draconian control measures. If there really is a surge on hospitals that have been mostly empty all year, then more then likely it is due to the holidays that just passed and the dumb shit people do to injure themselves during that time.