Medical Dispatch Times Too Long In Los Angeles

A lengthy newspaper investigation of Los Angeles Fire Department dispatch times shows that fewer incidents are being dispatched within a 60-second standard over the past five years, leading to a 26 percent increase in call handling times for medical incidents. The Los Angeles Times study of 1 million incidents determined that it took an average of one minute and 45 seconds to dispatch a medical incident last year, compared to just 1:23 in 2007. The city’s fire department now dispatches incidents within 60 seconds only 15 percent of the time, compared to 38.5 percent in 2007. Perhaps not so coincidentally, the dispatch times began turning worse in 2008, at about the same time the city and departmental budgets began to squeeze staffing at the fire department and its communications center. The newspaper’s figures add to an existing controversy over overall fire department response times that erupted earlier this year. A candidate for mayor questioned how the fire department calculated response times, and LAFD officials admitted they were using a six-minute performance goal, one minute longer than the nationally-accepted five-minute goal.According to the Times, a 2010 study by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) found that medical calls in two large counties took an average of 44 seconds to dispatch. The LAFD average dispatch time is more than double that time.

Even critical medical incidents take longer to dispatch, the newspaper noted. During 2011, just 35 percent of reported cardiac arrests were dispatched in less than 60 seconds. In 2007, 66 percent of cardiac arrests were dispatched in less than 60 seconds.

LAFD officials declined to respond to the newspaper’s dispatch time investigation.

Read the full Times story for more details and graphs.