Morehead City EMS: Taxi instead of ambulance for some calls

In an emergency we rely on emergency medical services to provide the help we need. And one fire and rescue team will soon be offering a new service.

Morehead City Fire and Rescue is debuting a new taxi voucher service in 2017 that will allow residents who call 911 with non life threatening emergencies to opt to take a taxi over an ambulance.

Kelly Urban, EMS Coordinator, says, "This will be utilized for individuals who meet a specific criteria of non emergent non life threatening injuries or illness in a situation where they don't have any other means of transportation."

The taxi voucher program will give patients one voucher marked with the date and time and can only be used within two hours of it being issued.

The voucher will be good for a free one way trip to the Carteret Health Care emergency department.

Urban says the program was created by looking closely at their dispatch data

She says, "90 percent of our call volume fits into a category of non emergent type calls and it doesn't necessarily mean they don't need an ambulance to transport them, it just means we aren't running them to the hospital lights and sirens."

Urban says the taxi voucher program will cover a wide variety of non life threatening scenarios. "Minor extremity injuries, lacerations without major blood loss. Prescription refills direct admits - appointments that are already scheduled at the hospital."

She says the taxi voucher program is optional - and when its offered, the patient can choose to opt out and still ride in an ambulance.

Three area taxi services will participate in the taxi voucher program which will be funded by the city.