Fire Dept. Reverses Position on Releasing Info

In the space of four hours on Thursday, the Los Angeles Fire Department shut down its Twitter feed of incident information, announced it would no longer release incident records to the public or press—and then completely reversed itself. The actions came after a year-long newspaper investigation showed the LAFD wasn’t accurately tracking incident statistics, and that EMS response times have been increasing. The press scrutiny also raised questions whether department officials had been attempting to hide those declining EMS service levels with inaccurate statistics. The latest action began at 1:39 a.m. on Thursday morning when the fire department’s Twitter feed @LAFD sent a message, “This account is on temporary hiatus.” Later in the morning Battalion Chief Stephen Ruda explained, “We’ve been told by powers that be that if we provide that information we are in violation of federal law.” He was referring to the city attorney’s interpretation of the Health Insurance Portability and Privacy Act (HIPAA), passed in 1996 to provide certain confidentiality of patient records. However, in general, it does not apply to governmental EMS operations or restrict routine dispatching procedures. The law makes no mention of confidentiality for EMS response times. After the morning announcement, the Los Angeles Times raised questions about the new policy, gaining the attention of LA mayor Eric Garcetti. By 3 p.m. the LAFD announced that it would release incident records, and that its Twitter feed would resume operations. Garcetti and fire chief Brian Cummings said they had been unaware of the fire department’s policy change, and that it had been based on a miscommunication. In a statement, Garcetti said, “Frankly, it’s ridiculous. We immediately told the department to fix this, and it’s being fixed. The Twitter account is going back online, and they’re going to be giving out the information they’re supposed to be giving out.” Download (pdf) the city auditor’s May 2012 report on EMS response times.