LEDE: Shortly after her 14-year-old son, Kevin, arrived at school on Sept. 28, Jennifer Daly received a call from the nurse’s office. Kevin was feeling weak, and one of his eyes was blurry.
Ms. Daly, who owns a day care in the Howard Beach neighborhood of Queens, headed to the school, and the nurse called an ambulance.
As Ms. Daly was stuck in traffic, the nurse called 911 again, concerned that Kevin might be having a stroke. Ms. Daly’s husband, a retired New York City firefighter, called 911 too.
NUT GRAF: On Tuesday, Ms. Daly told her story, which was earlier reported by WABC-TV, to the City Council during an hourslong hearing about the troubling rise in the city’s emergency response times.
QUOTE THE SUPPORTS THE STORY: “It’s kind of sickening, because they should have availability for things like this,” she said in an interview after the hearing.
STATISTICS THAT CONFIRM THE STORY: It is now taking 41.2 percent longer for ambulances to respond to life-threatening emergencies than it did a decade ago and more than twice as long for non-life-threatening emergencies, according to a recent report by the New York City comptroller. Response times for life-threatening emergencies took almost as long as response times did for non-life-threatening emergencies in 2015.
QUOTES FROM OTHER PEOPLE: “It is apparent to anyone paying attention that our city has struggled to meet its obligations to provide timely emergency medical care to all New Yorkers,” said Joann Ariola, the chair of the Council Committee on Fire and Emergency Management.
No one contested her assessment.
RESPONSE OR RESPONSE QUOTES: “The department is currently engaged in a challenging period of increasing response times,” said John Esposito, the Fire Department’s chief of department. “We know this is unacceptable, and we are working tirelessly to reverse this trend.”
INFORMATION THAT FLESHES OUT ANOTHER POINT OF VIEW: Both Fire Department officials and union officials said that lagging worker pay has created a retention and recruitment problem. While the department has a budget for 4,500 emergency medical service workers, it only employs about 4,000, Mr. Esposito said.
Entry-level emergency medical technicians earn only $44,000 — less than entry-level sanitation workers, firefighters, correction workers and police officers. By their fifth year in service, an emergency medical technician earns a base pay of $69,000, compared with more than $100,000 for the majority of uniformed workers.
ENDING THAT MAYBE MOVES THE STORY FORWARD (KICKER) “We believe solving the pay issue is the first step to getting everything back on track,” Mr. Esposito said.
Leave a Reply