DC Fire and EMS Chief Gregory Dean will ask the D.C. council on Tuesday for authority to hire an outside company to provide ambulance service to help relieve his overtaxed fleet.
Under Dean's plan, which has the support of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, Fire and EMS would contract with a third party ambulance company. A DC fire engine with paramedics on board would still be dispatched to every 911 call. They would then determine whether the call was serious enough to require an EMS ambulance. Less serious calls would lead to the dispatch of a private ambulance.
With ambulance all volumes soaring, allowing private ambulances to handle lesser calls could free up EMS ambulances to respond to the most serious cases, and, Dean hopes, prevent incidents like the two cases this summer in which infants had to be rushed to hospitals in fire engines. We're looking at making sure that DC Fire is available to respond to each and every emergency in a timely fashion," Dean told WUSA9 on Monday.
"We are running sometimes up to the high 600 calls per day. And we have some vehicles that run over 23 hours per day.," Dean said. "And so the opportunity to slow some of these vehicles down so that we can do preventative maintenance as well as ensure that training is up to date and we're keeping everybody up to speed is an important part of good EMS system."
Dean came to Washington D.C. this spring from Seattle. There, a public/private partnership has been maintained on ambulance services for more than thirty years.