Anecdotes do not a trend make, but there is something unnerving about persistent reports that people are waiting 10, 15 and sometimes more than 20 minutes for a fire department ambulance after dialing Chicago’s 911 emergency response center.
Even city officials admit the average response time for an ambulance is 6 minutes and 34 seconds, or more than two minutes slower than that of many suburbs. They hasten to add, though, that when response times include all types of emergency vehicles–especially the city’s more plentiful fire engines–the average falls to a more respectable 4 minutes and 50 seconds.
In a way, that line of defense only underscores the underlying problem: The Chicago Fire Department remains heavily staffed and equipped to fight fires, even though its workload has shifted dramatically toward the provision of emergency medical services. Over the last 10 years, while the number of fires and fire fatalities has been going steadily down, the number of calls for emergency medical services has been headed up. . .to a record 232,716 last year.
The city has been slow to adjust. While the number of fully equipped ambulances has held steady at 60 or less, a plan to refit 100 fire engines with advanced life-support gear has fallen behind schedule, with only 20 trucks now ALS equipped. Newly hired fire recruits are cross-trained as emergency medical technicians (EMTs), but most older smoke-eaters haven’t volunteered for the training, and their union contract prohibits the city from forcing the issue.
The city’s 614 paramedics, meanwhile, are kept on the same 24-hours-on/48-hours-off schedule more suited to sporadic fire suppression than more constant ambulance operations.
Paramedics complain privately, though, that their biggest frustration is misuse. Too many 911 dispatchers still send them on “transportation” missions (ferrying the sick to or between hospitals), making them unavailable for their primary mission–saving lives during the precious minutes following an accident or a heart attack when seconds really matter.
Chicago pioneered many of the fire prevention and suppression techniques that have reduced the menace of fire in cities across the nation. It’s past time to stop resisting change when it comes to emergency medical services. . .and to get the city’s response times down to, or below, state and federal averages.
