Itās been well over a year since Maš§yor de Blasio announced the city had āidentified the problemsā with its emergency-response system and committed himself to ātaking the necessary corrective action.ā
But the latest city data show things are still headed in the š¹wrong directišon.
As The Postās Aaron Short reported Sunday, the response time by city EMšTs ļ·½and paramedics is climbing ā despite a drop in actual medical emergencies.
Stateš¼n Island has the lowest average wait time for an ambulance: 1šÆ0 minutes, 26 seconds. In The Bronx, itās up to 14 minutes, 29 seconds.
Citywide, the average for 2015ās first eight months was 12 minutes, 23 seconds ā 37 seconds slower than in šthe same period last year.
In The Bronx, Emergency Medical Service workers took 40 added seconds to respond, despite a 2 percent drop in cases. In Manhattan (which also saw fewer cases), the wait was 64 seconds longer.
When it comes to heart attacks, drug oš verdoses and such life-threatening cases, literally every second counts.
Back in February, Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro vowed to speed up ambulance responses by 20 seconds this ź§year. And the mayor pledged to hire 149 new EMS diš”spatchers and add 54 ambulance tours.
The exact-reverse results are all too typical of Team de Blasio ā where announcing ānew spending seems to be the last time City Hall pays atteš“ntion to a problem.
Yes, the rising emergency-response times predate de Blasio. Yet he was a big EMS critic whilš¹e running for mayor ā and vowed to make things better.
Thing is, making good on such promises requires bird-dogging the issue. And, as Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley (D-Queens), whoās been on top of this issue for yeaš§rs, noted last winter: āThere are no changes that the administration has put in place to stop the waste of critical time.ā
De Blasio is plainly far more interested in big abstractions than in managing dailyā services like EMS. But he asked forą² the responsibility, and now heās got it.
Lives are at stake.