DEATHS DUE TO AMBULANCE DELAYS

On June 7^th 2003, in New York City, a 4-year-old girl’s life was taken within 8 minutes. That is the amount of time it took for medical attention to get to her. If only 4 of those minutes was subtracted from that time, she would still be alive today. At the intersection of West 97^th street and Amsterdam Ave., her grandmother was rammed off of the road, onto the curb in their SUV. At that moment, 911 was dialed. The EMS dispatcher did not know about this call until 4 minutes after it was placed. It seemed as if they did not take their job seriously at all, considering that no one was sitting at their computer to notice the call. It wasn’t until after 4 minutes that someone returned to their desk to notice that a little girl’s life was in jeopardy. 8 minutes later, an ambulance arrived at the scene to find her dead, and her grandmother injured. In order to avoid getting reprimanded, a fire commissioner by the name of Sal Cassano portrays it as “human error.” He stated that, “They just failed to read the screen” and “We’ll deal with that in ways of a person should not get up until they’re relieved properly. The screen should never be left unread because these are life-saving calls.” He basically made it clear that the 911 system are not to blame for. Even though, those behind the computer desk, working for their services, could not be productive without the team working together. It just doesn’t add up. Statistics show that there is 12.5% of patients who experienced a handover delay of 30-60 minutes and a 5% delay of over an hour. Not to mention, patients in major cities were more likely to experience delays than those in other areas, and patients under 16 years were more likely to experience delays than those over than 60 years of age. These same problems occur in California also. It happened to my little brother. According to one other article, it states that more than one in three ambulances exceed the 30-minute recommendation in Fresno and when ambulance staff are delayed, it causes a ripple effect, making matters worse. When will they begin to take their jobs seriously?

http: http://www.wnyc.org/story/human-error-blamed-911-delay///www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23039294

http://www.fresnobee.com/2014/02/15/3773014/emergency-services-nearly-paralyzed.html