When Beatrice McCray called 9-1-1 fearing she was experiencing a second stroke, this is the answer she got from the dispatcher: "No ambulance available."
McCray says, "I felt like I wasn't important, and it made no difference whether I croaked or not."
Our I-Team investigation in February 2008 showed that every day, someone in Cincinnati calls for an ambulance but can't get one. All the units are out on other runs.
Today, City Council's Law and Order Committee got its official report from a task force set up after our story, to deal with the problem.
The 16-page report culminates more than a year of task force meetings with what council member and task force co-chairman Jeff Berding calls "a blueprint for doing a better job… I feel this report really makes some solid recommendations that will fix that problem going forward."
Among the recommendations:
"Continue funding Cincinnati Fire Department paramedic training" to train 100 new paramedics over the next five years so that every ambulance has advanced life support medical care.
"Create a Dispatch Nurse Triage System". Nurses would help staff 9-1-1 calls and divert non-emergency calls to clinics or other care, instead of automatically sending an ambulance as the current policy mandates."Create a collaborative response unit" that would identify frequent callers to 9-1-1 and get them care and transportation they need to access non-emergency services."Create four paramedic Quick Response Vehicles" for each fire district and "two additional transport units."There are 17 recommendations and much more information in the report, which we’ve linked at the top of the story. Of course, with recommendations come costs.
Berding says, "It certainly will require some financial investment on the part of the city of Cincinnati but I would offer it's one of the best investments, most important investments that we can make, because it really is that basic level of care that citizens do expect a local government to provide."
Council should vote on the recommendations in two weeks. Then the real battle will continue over the next five to six years, as council will need to keep funding new paramedic classes to ramp up to the new system at a time it's looking at budget shortfalls and a challenging economy.
