Your story has one great kink in it.
If Mrs. Buttercup can ride for an hour to get to another District, she didn’t need an ambulance in the first place she could have driven to the hospital.
In America today there are thousands of people calling an Ambulance and tying it up because they believe that if they are brought into the Emergency Room by Ambulance they will be seen sooner. How many of the families of these people get in their car and follow the ambulance to the hospital, when they could have taken the patient themselves.
I can tell you that many of these people would have arrived at the hospital 15 minutes sooner if they had driven themselves or had someone drive them. Todays Medical Ambulance services are tied up for hours on taxi runs.
Many times we take these people in on the cot and the Nurses tell them to get up and go sit in the waiting room.
We could retire the entire population of North & South Dakota on the money wasted on Ambulance calls that are not needed and Emergency Room visits that should have been taken care of in a Doctors office.
Don’t know about where you are, but here the Fire Department does or does not do the transport based on what they find. They will encourage people to go to the ER on their own or with friends and family but those really needing transport with services get it. Charged $800 for it too.
DK