Grand Jury Weighs In on Medical Response Times

The Los Angeles County (Calif.) civil grand jury is the latest group to criticize the city’s fire dispatching operations, and has issued a report recommending comm center civilianization, the use of emergency medical dispatching (EMD) and improved technology, all intended to improve medical incident response times. The 23-member grand jury also said the LA City fire department should reinstate funding that was cut in 2008 so more engine companies and ambulances could provide faster response times. The fire department has been under fire for the past year after it was revealed that calculations had been changed to make response times appear shorter than they actually were. Those figures were then used to justify cost-cutting that included reducing staffing by about 20 percent, county officials said. In its report, the grand jury said it visited four area comm centers and interviewed city fire officials. They gathered data from the Verdugo, LA County, LA City and Long Beach comm centers and compared response times and incident handling. The grand jury concluded that the caller’s language and cellular call locations add a degree of complexity to handling 911 calls. Additionally, geography is a factor in response times, especially for isolated locations and those in hilly communities. “Of the above factors, the most crucial and the most obvious impediment to adequate response times is the budget issue,” the grand jury said. They were “impressed” by the use of civilians to handle 911 calls, and recommended that LA City should replaced firefighters in the comm center with civilians. They recommended upgrading the 30 year-old computer-aided dispatch (CAD) software. Download (pdf) the full grand jury report.