Before I moved out of state, I worked ambulance for a company that had a large corporate inventory redistribution center within its 911 coverage area, and I can tell you that the place was big enough that if we'd been summoned directly via 911 directly we would have encountered the following things:
- A delay at the front gate, while security tries to figure out why the truck with big shiny lights is there.
- A delay because the complex is so huge that you have to narrow down which building the patient is in, and where in that building they are.
- A delay because you're dodging heavy equipment moving around in the warehouses ("they tried to kill me with a forklift huzzah!") because nobody issued an emergency shutdown order for that particular location.
- A delay because now there are tractor/trailer rigs blocking your route out of the complex.
Fortunately, the company that owned this monstrous campus had the good sense to reach out to the local EMS community and establish a response plan, which prevented all of the above delays from happening. They also had an on-site quick response team composed of licensed medical first responders who were also well-versed in hazards specific to the complex, such as the afore-mentioned forklifts. We even helped train these guys and held emergency response drills with them.
So, yeah, when a company has a policy for its employees to dial the internal emergency number, most of the time there's no nefarious plot behind it.
If you happen to collapse from cardiac arrest, you have about six minutes before irreversible brain damage begins to occur.
If you're one of the fortunate unfortunates who happens to collapse in a witnessed cardiac arrest (which it doesn't sound like this guy was, unfortunately, since he was "found" lying on the floor), you get early access to CPR, defibrillation, meds, transport and advanced care. I can tell you that it would've taken about twice that just to figure out where the patient is in a complex that size that doesn't have a good working response plan.
As for "qualified company staff", my license was old enough that it was pre-National Registry, so I can't speak to portability of staff from state to state, but generally, when you see an ad looking to hire EMTs or medical first responders for places like these, they still have to be licensed by the state they're going to be operating in, and they still have to work under the authority of a licensed physician serving as their medical director. It isn't just some "Peter Griffin, Certified CPR!" responding to your location with the crash kit. Otherwise you're opening your company to huge liability.
Hope this helps.
