By Ryan Schwach<\/p>\n
A Queens councilmember introduced legislation that she says would help notify New Yorkers when ambulances are delayed or unavailable. <\/p>\n
The Minutes Matter bill, sponsored by Rockaway and south Queens Republican Councilmember Joann Ariola, would require the city to send out a notification whenever FDNY and EMS are experiencing a backlog and don\u2019t have enough ambulances to respond to emergency calls.<\/p>\n
Notifications would include information about non-emergency room resources, and would help New Yorkers consider if they should find another way of getting to a hospital. The notifications would trigger if EMS has more than 25 pending ambulances dispatches. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf there are dozens of emergency calls sitting in a queue because there simply aren\u2019t enough ambulances available to answer them, New Yorkers have a right to know,\u201d Ariola said. \u201cWe issue alerts for severe weather, air quality, flooding and other emergencies because information allows people to make better decisions. An EMS backlog should be no different.\u201d <\/p>\n
Ariola said the bill was written in response to an increase in EMS backlogs in recent months. On July 2, 600 emergency calls were held and put on a queue because there weren\u2019t enough ambulances available to respond to each call. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe Minutes Matter bill will bring transparency to our ambulance system while shining a light on a crisis that has been allowed to grow for far too long,\u201d Ariola said. \u201cThe problem is that there are too few ambulances and too few people being asked to answer too many calls. New Yorkers deserve to know when the EMS system is under extraordinary strain, and our EMS professionals deserve a system that gives them the staffing and resources they need to do their jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tyler Weaver, a retired EMT whose son died of a heart attack, said he and his son\u2019s friends waited more than 15 minutes for an ambulance to arrive as his son was dying. <\/p>\n
\u201cNothing will bring my son back, but let\u2019s help other families avoid his scenario, and bring more sunlight to EMS response time problems,\u201d Weaver said. \u201cAfter listening to the 911 call audio from my son\u2019s cardiac arrest call from 2023, and hearing his friends perform CPR for more than 15 minutes, while they repeatedly ask the FDNY EMS dispatcher where the ambulance was, you realize that the level of emergency service being provided by the City does not meet expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n
The union that represents the city\u2019s EMTs and paramedics is in support of the legislation. <\/p>\n
\u201cNew Yorkers depend on the life saving services EMS first responders provide and they deserve to know when ambulances are backed up, because that means urgent health care will be delayed for you or a loved one having a heart attack or suffering a serious injury,\u201d Local 2507 President Michael Greco said. \u201cTransparency about delays is not an indictment of anyone. It is how a responsible city fixes a problem that must be solved for its people.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bill now sits in the City Council Committee on Fire and Emergency Management, which Ariola chairs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Ryan Schwach A Queens councilmember introduced legislation that she says would help notify New Yorkers when ambulances…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324910,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-324909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}