If you call 911 for a medical emergency in Denver, you will need to wait.
None of Denver’s major emergency medical services — 911, fire or ambulance — met their response time goals between May 2023 and March 2024, but those goals may be unrealistic, a researcher said. city audit released Thursday.
During the eleven months considered for the audit, Denver’s 911 call takers answered the phone within 15 seconds only 71% of the time, which is short of their goal of doing so 90% of the time. Firefighters arrived on the scene within five minutes in 74% of cases, while in 90% of cases they did not. Denver Health paramedics reached 84% of their calls within nine minutes, less than their target of 90%.
Paramedics took 10 minutes and 14 seconds to reach a scene 90% of the time, while firefighters took six minutes and 11 seconds 90% of the time, according to Denver’s 39-page report Office of the accountant.
“Our current standard is unrealistic,” said Denver Executive Director Armando Saldate Ministry of Public Securitysaid Thursday during an audit committee meeting.
The auditors did not disagree with this, but neither did they independently consider the target times to be unrealistic. The standard response times for firefighters and ambulance personnel, established by the National Fire Protection AssociationDon’t take into account real factors such as traffic congestion, weather, construction or street hazards, the auditors found.
In several cities close to Denver’s size, officials have already adjusted their target response times to exceed association goals to account for such factors, the auditors found.
The auditors recommended that Denver study response times, patient outcomes, internal processes and real-world factors to determine more realistic numbers.
“Setting goals that are unrealistic may result in continued noncompliance, which may lead to the public’s perception that emergency response is inadequate,” the auditors wrote. “This could lead to an erosion of public confidence.”
City officials began reevaluating response time goals in November 2023 and plan to continue reviewing the issue over the next year, with the goal of testing new goals in 2026, the audit report said.
“Let’s not just move it so that we are compliant, we need to have a well thought out system and set a goal (where) we reach the patients that need us to reach them quickly,” Saldate said.
Deventer Fire Department Chief Desmond Fulton said firefighters continually encounter hazards while trying to get to the scene. He said the city’s protected bike lanes in particular can make it difficult for the department’s large trucks to navigate the streets, either because of the bike lanes themselves — separated from the rest of the roadway by bollards — or because of drivers illegally passing by street parking. them.
“In those cases, we then have to go one, two, three blocks further than the route we would normally take, onto streets that may be wider or may not have the space that would prohibit us from making those turns,” he said.
Gary Bryskiewicz, Denver Health’s chief paramedic, said the agency is doing a better job of diverting calls that don’t require an ambulance to other services, such as through Denver’s Support Team Assisted Response (STAR) programthat sends mental health professionals in vans to some 911 calls instead of ambulances.
“We are making progress to ensure we send the right resources to the right people at the right time,” he said.
On the 911 side, the city saw significant improvement in call response times within the audit period as staffing and retention at the agency improved, the report said. Denver 911 went from answering just 61% of calls within 15 seconds in May 2023 to answering 83% of calls in 15 seconds in March 2024.
A recent study found that the agency needs 41 more full-time call-takers and police dispatchers, in addition to the 97 already employed. Deventer 911 Director Andrew Dameron. He expects an increase in the 911 fee that will appear on people’s phone bills next year, allowing him to hire at least 19 new employees.
The audit report also addressed how Denver measures its response times, the policies that guide response time reporting and the activities of the Emergency Medical Response System Advisory Committee, a group formed in 2008 to oversee the performance of the system. The group was poorly organized and did not properly document its meetings, the auditors found.
Saldate said in a response letter that the advisory group saw significant turnover and canceled meetings during the COVID-19 pandemic, but acknowledged that the group would benefit from better administration.
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