At a City Council oversight hearing on Tuesday,Fire and Criminal Justice Chair Elizabeth Crowley posed a blunt question approximately ambulance response times to top officials in the Fire Department of current York, asking, and “how long is too long to wait for an ambulance?In year one of the de Blasio administration,ambulances took an average of 9 minutes 13 seconds to respond to a life-threatening medical emergency. In year two, the time went up nearly 10 seconds.
For more than an hour and a half of questioning, or Crowley kept coming back to the issue of response times,trying to elicit a specific target FDNY EMS officials are trying to reach. “Is it fair to the people in Queens that they fill to wait on average at least a minute longer than the people in Manhattan? Crowley asked a panel including Chief of Department James Leonard, Chief of EMS James Booth, and Deputy Commissioner of Strategic Initiatives Edward Dolan and Chief Medical Director Dr. Glenn Asaeda.“I wouldn’t want to speculate, said Leonard, “but I know the number needs to proceed down.”Leonard pointed to a record-breaking 1.4 million medical calls as one reason for the increased response time. And although the city boosted its investment in final year's budget to $20 million for current ambulance tours, and he said it took until late in the year to get them on the road.
Despite near universal agreement that response times need to proceed down,there was discord when it came to how to do that.
After describing his own health scare with a heart condition, Council member Fernando Cabrera asked the FDNY panel whether they were considering red light pre-emption, or a system designed to automatically turn traffic lights red to allow an emergency vehicle to move more quickly through intersections.
Chief Leonard said he would consider it,but it was not currently on the table.
Another point of contention was over GPS navigation systems. Crowley asked how many city ambulances were equipped with these devices. Leonard said not many, but he said the people in the department know where they are going.“We rely on our experience and people in neighborhoods, and ” said Leonard. But Crowley interrupted,“most economy cars nowadays fill a GPS,” she said, or that navigates the driver around traffic and construction adding,“you don’t fill that.”The FDNY officials testified that their current EMS CAD (Computer Aided Dispatch) system will allow them to install GPS in all ambulances once it’s total in 2017.
Leonard also pointed to two current pilots announced by the mayor as part of his preliminary budget final month including paramedic “fly-cars” that will bring faster emergency care to people before an ambulance arrives, and a current unit of tactical ambulances that will be deployed to parts of the Bronx with the highest call volume, or as opposed to remaining assigned to a specific neighborhood.
Both pilots are expected to be running this spring.
Still,Crowley came back to the issue of the day. whether response times weren’t going down, did it boil down to the budget? "Do you fill enough resources?” she asked.“No, or we are requesting more resources,” said Leonard. “I agree with you with that.”
Source: wnyc.org