18 months. 362 people. 3,869 ambulance trips. $11.6 million.

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 10/5/5 | Ilene Lelchuk

[SmithL]

S.F. confronts the human and financial costs of repeatedly sending paramedics to help homeless alcoholics.

Niels Tangherlini, a San Francisco paramedic captain, found Clarence staggering down Mission Street one recent Tuesday morning clutching a plastic shopping bag holding leaky food cartons and a can of Steel Reserve.

Steel Reserve is cheap beer that packs a punch. Drinking, Tangherlini believes, is the cause of the 63-year-old homeless alcoholic's inflamed pancreas and will kill Clarence without swift intervention.

"Please, I don't want to go," Clarence cried through a dirty gray beard and missing front teeth.

"You're dying," Tangherlini responded with the patience of a preschool teacher. "For your sake, your health, your safety, I need to get you into a detox program."

"Why am I so important?" Clarence asked.

Clarence is important because, among other things, he is one of 362 individuals -- most of them drunk and homeless or marginally housed -- whom paramedics have to pick up repeatedly. Between March 2004 and August 2005, they were picked up a total of at least 3,869 times, according to city records that track everyone riding an ambulance four or more times a month.

Based on the city's estimate that each ambulance ride and emergency room visit costs up to $3,000, the price of picking up the frequent riders could have been as high as $11.6 million during that period.

The human cost -- of people dying in the streets and of paramedics so busy with them that potentially they respond more slowly to other 911 calls -- is harder to calculate.

[SmithL]

San Francisco needs an exit strategy from this quagmire.

[frankjr]

They should start a hobo specific ambulance service. Something less fancy. Like maybe a cab.

[SMARTY]

They have one, it's called San Andreas

[Dallas59]

It's Bushes fault.

[Choose Ye This Day]

Wait til Michael Medved sees this. He'll blow a gasket, spend 3 hours on it.

[kellynla]

BTTT

[RebelBanker]

U. S. out of Occupied San Francisco!

[boomop1]

They want Sam to pay for this, they will continue to complain without fixing their quagmire.

[kellynla]

Medved?
Wait til Savage who lives in SF gets a hold of this, hell, he'll go nuclear! LOL

[martin_fierro]

Minivans.

We need hordes of roaming minivans. With wireless internet access!

[frankjr]

"With wireless internet access!"

That goes without saying. It is a basic human right. I am pretty sure there is something in the Constitution about WiFi. In fact, I am still waiting for my free phone, free cable, free snail mail, free food, free house and free clothing.

[Uncledave]

That's $32,000 per wino, for those playing at home.

Are they sending an ambulance or a motorcade of limos?

[tiki]

Or build a nice park next to the hospital w/a discount liquor store across the street?

[Choose Ye This Day]

But how will you be able to tell? Savage is always nuclear.


Medved HATES homelessness. That and littering are two of his biggest peeves.

[JAWs]

Obviously liberal compassion is reaping its expensive reward.

[kipita]

The mayor told The Chronicle that he is interested in implementing the rarely used law Welfare and Institution Code 5170, which allows cities to detain and treat public inebriates for 72 hours against their will without having to declare them mentally incompetent.

I think the Moscow plan would be much better.

[kellynla]

"That and littering are two of his biggest peeves."

ohhhhh, I didn't know that.
I don't get an opportunity to listen to him very often.

[Frank_2001]

"Why am I so important?" Clarence asked.......

Wasn't the self-esteem movement supposed to put an end to this kind of talk?;)

[Between the Lines]

Drinking, Tangherlini believes, is the cause of the 63-year-old homeless alcoholic's inflamed pancreas and will kill Clarence without swift intervention.

Pancreatic problems associated with alcohol is actually a slow painful death, not one that needs "swift intervention."

[Pessimist]

So they've spent $32k - and counting - per hobo so far.

If somebody wants to drink himself to death, who are we to stop them?