LA Fire Announces Big Changes in EMS Reponses

After two years of brutal newspaper investigations into how the Los Angeles Fire Department handles emergency medical incidents, the agency announced that it will completely revamp its emergency medical dispatching (EMD) system, essentially dropping a system that’s used world-wide and creating its own set of questioning protocols. According to an announcement yesterday, the department will spend $400,000 and the next year to develop fewer and more streamlined questions to ask 911 callers when they report a medical emergency, leading to a quicker response. The Los Angeles Times newspaper began a series of investigations and stories in 2012 about slow call handling, overly-complex questioning routines and delayed notification of fields units for medical incidents. The department is now using the Medical Priority Dispatch System (MPDS) from Priority Dispatch Inc. The EMS protocols were developed in the 1970s by Dr. Jeff Clawson, and have now been supplemented to include law enforcement and fire questioning protocols. Clawson has earlier defended the EMD system, saying that any problems were created by LAFD dispatchers not following the protocol. Read more about the new EMD system here.