Jun 11, 2008 7:02 pm US/Eastern
Agonizing Wait: NYC Ambulance Response Time Awful
A Normal 6-Minute Wait For Emergency Assistance Has Grown To, In Some Cases, As Much As 2 Hours
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
An 88-year-old woman collapsed last week on a Midtown street and wound up waiting nearly an hour before an ambulance arrived. CBS 2 HD has learned her story is not unique. Agonizing waits for emergency help are becoming all too frequent.
Anne Doherty showed CBS 2 HD where it happened.
"I was horrified. I could only think that it might have been a member of my family," Doherty said.
Doherty stood by helplessly. She waited at 55th Street and Lexington Avenue for an ambulance for nearly an hour. But it turns out, that was nothing.
Documents obtained by CBS 2 HD paint a horrifying picture of delay. In just one hour on Tuesday some 40 emergency calls were put on hold for between 20 minutes and two hours because no ambulances were available.
"It is unbelievable, but that has become the norm of late," said Patrick Bahnken, president of the Uniformed EMTs, Paramedics and Inspectors Union.
On Tuesday:
* A 15-year-old boy with a foot injury had to wait 1 hour and 58 minutes for an ambulance.
* A 50-year-old man in diabetic shock had to wait 1 hour and 22 minutes.
* An ailing 37-year-old woman had to wait 1 hour and 14 minutes.
* A woman in her 20s, who was feeling ill, had to wait 1 hour and 28 minutes.
* A 40-year-old woman with a broken leg had to wait 45 minutes.
Union officials say these stats show an alarming trend that can have dire consequences.
"If a sanitation truck doesn't show up your garbage piles up," Bahnken said. "If the trains and buses don't run, you're late to work. If the ambulance doesn't show up in a timely fashion, people die."
Bahnken blames critical staff shortages and low salaries for lagging response times, response times that are supposed to average just six minutes.
"The reality is that we're just throwing bodies at calls and hoping we get there in a timely fashion and it's not working," Bahnken said.
Bahnken says New York City is down 200 EMTs and 100 paramedics.
A spokesman for the FDNY admits there are staff shortages, but says it's exacerbated by summer heat waves which produce an increase in emergency calls.
The FDNY is still investigating last week's case of the 88-year-old woman.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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