Q&A
Geographic disparities in emergency response times
0:34:45
·
119 sec
Council Member Ariola raises concerns about geographic disparities in emergency response times, and Chief Michael Fields explains the factors contributing to these disparities and efforts to address them.
- Areas with longer response times include Upper Manhattan, North Bronx, Astoria, Greenpoint, and Breezy Point on the Rockaway Peninsula
- Factors contributing to disparities include the location of hospitals and the need for ambulances to leave their assigned areas for hospital transports
- The department is working on leveraging new technology in the upcoming EMS CAD system to address these issues
- They regularly analyze data on outliers (responses over 10 minutes) to reallocate resources to affected areas
Joann Ariola
0:34:45
Okay.
0:34:47
Let's let's go over to geographic disparities.
0:34:53
So data from the city reflects geographic disparities and emergency response times are city wide.
0:35:00
There was further public data that shows various areas that had disparity and longer response times.
0:35:08
There were Upper Manhattan, North Bronx, Astoria, Green Point, and I'd like to add to that breezy point on the Rockaway Peninsula.
0:35:15
Because they're just seeing enormous response times, and there was a fatality that could have been hope of fate is fate, but I would hope that that person could have been saved.
0:35:27
So what are we doing?
0:35:28
And how do you explain such dramatic changes and response times in certain neighborhoods as opposed to others?
Michael Fields
0:35:37
So the uniqueness of EMS in itself is that our resources are they may start the day off in a particular area.
0:35:45
So I wanna utilize the 7 far precinct.
0:35:48
So the 7 far precinct, we have numerous ALS and BLS units that are inside that pre inside that precinct area.
0:35:54
But due to what we call hospital visits, only hospital that services that community is Brookdale on the Brooklyn side and Jamaica hospital on the Queen side.
0:36:03
So any resources that starts today off inside that respective area, when they're going to taking people to the hospital, they have to leave those respective communities, and now they're points.
0:36:14
So now, Brooklyn has less resources.
0:36:16
So we're trying to we're hoping that when we get on board with our new EMS CAD system, we will be able to leverage the new technology to make that happen less often.
0:36:26
So we're working towards that.
0:36:28
We are constantly looking at the the amount of outliers and outliers are level 1 to 3 or priority 1 to 3 assignments that have response ops at a greater than 10 minutes.
0:36:39
We look at the data and we try to leverage reallocate resources to those respective areas.
