The aftermath of The Kansas City Fire Department hostile takeover of MAST continues to unfold in so many unfortuante ways.
To wit . . .
A RECENT CITY HALL REPORT SHOWS NORTHLAND EMERGENCY RESPONSE TIMES FALLING EVEN FURTHER FOR THE KCFD!!!
It's downright scary but don't take my word for it . . . Check out the City Hall report for yourself.
ARD1 is how the vast majority of Kansas City's Northland is defined and the 67% number of calls that rate above the 9 minute window mandated by the City REPRESENT ANOTHER SERIOUS DECLINE.
It's all here in the KCFD February 2011 Response Time Report That Mainstream Media has yet to discover.
Again, the 3% decline this time is a big deal.
Consider . . . Last Fall there was a HUGE ruckus raised when the same number was holding at 70%.
Obviously, things are getting worse as the KCFD struggles to incorporate the remaining MAST employees and Ambulance service in general into their organization.
Developing . . .
Amazing how this stuff comes to light AFTER the referendum. Did you read that KY is closing 20 fire houses...and those people are scared because they live on top of each other and an unattended fire would be reminiscent of Dresden.
ReplyDeleteHere, probably not so much but of course every firefighter thinks he's an equal cousin of the NY and Chicago departments.
Meant to say NY not KY.
ReplyDeleteLOL Good thing you passed the e-tax. Tax dollars for poor service. lol
ReplyDeleteIn the private sector its pay for performance not entitlement. But hey its Kansas City where you pay more for less.
Kansas City gets the poor service it deserves.
ReplyDeleteNobody at city hall cares about actual services and performance, especially now that the gravy train will be around for at least another five years.
ReplyDeleteThanks for passing the e-tax. If we have a little money left over after ladling it out to our insiders and supporters, we may be able to commission a $300,000 study as to why cith hall services are so poor.
No money left to fix anything, though, and you can be sure no ine will lose their jobs just because of poor performance.
See 'ya in five years when we'll scare and trick you again!
Who cares. Its just a Kansas City home burning, car accident, or heart attack.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading glad I live in midtown Fuck the idiots who live up in "God's country" People up north move up north to get away from the black people, so their kids can go to school with other white kids. Got to love equally.
ReplyDeleteThese response time arguments are stupid. We picked an arbitrary number of 9 minutes and said that this was somehow magic. Well, it's not. Find me one study, one proven fact that response times at a 9 minute level are somehow so important. We could use 10, 11 or 12 minutes without any ill effect.
ReplyDeleteYou're a retard if you get sucked into the response time argument. What you need to look at is patient outcomes. How well do people fare after the take over vs before. I don't know the answer to that.
Getting stuck on response times is like evaluating police on how many speeding tickets they write while ignoring every other aspect of crime.
Isn't response time kind of a big deal on cardiac or pulmonary problems?
ReplyDeleteNot if your the one going TO the call if your the victim YES.
ReplyDeleteRM -- yes and no. It's not any more of a big deal than any other call. The only types of calls where there is a proven benefit to ultra short response times are cardic arrests. But you need a response time of FOUR minutes to get the best results.
ReplyDeleteYou have to understand this chart is talking about ALS response time. The BLS response time is very fast. Most of the calls in KC are BLS in nature. I'm not advocating for crappy response times, but I am saying that people need to understand that response times are a straw man. Everywhere else in medicine we focus on OUTCOMES. That's what should be happening here. Why focus on response times if the care is shitty? So we get shitty care on scene faster? Does that make sense? Good care is more important than fast and shitty care.
Halving the current 9 minute response time to 4:30 would require not double, but likely quadruple the number of ambulances at such an enormous cost nobody would support it.
The real answer is bystander CPR which is rare. After four minutes of being down without CPR, it makes little difference if the ambulance is there at 8,9,10, or 11 minutes. You have a pumper crew on scene doing CPR so that when ALS care arrives, it will actually be of benefit.
The rule of thumb that says a fire doubles in size every minute. so yeah its a big deal. But if its not your house who cares.
ReplyDeletethats doubles in size every thirty seconds..and hell yes we move north to get away from black people...that should tell you something..
ReplyDeleteGood thing we passed the E tax, or response times would decline!
ReplyDeleteOh, wait...
I guess I'm not surprised the E tax passed.
ReplyDeleteIt was like voting on whether or not to lower welfare payments, and only people getting welfare were allowed to vote.
8:32, you're too stupid to realize this is about AMBULANCE responses and not fires? No point is going any further if this is lost on you.
ReplyDeleteI'm curious... does KCFD send a bill to users of paramedic calls... and what are they.... like MED-ACT bills people they transport.
ReplyDeleteWhat are the fees, for what services, what about the uninsured? Teach us how it works.
6:03 AM: "In the private sector its (sic) pay for performance not entitlement."
ReplyDeleteOh really? Then please explain the bailouts of 2008-09. I'm pretty sure the banks and Wall Street firms are in the "private sector".
RM your average ambulance ride will cost you over $700 for a basic ride. If you need ALS it will at least double.
ReplyDeleteIf you don't think response times matter, just hope you are not trapped in your car, with a fractured femur, bleeding out into your thigh, with crushing chest injuries and a bruised heart. If response times are unimportant, why do they have a 'golden hour' for trauma's? If response times don't matter, how many BLS calls have we gone on that turned into ALS, with granny not breathing more than 4 times a minute or someone with a heart rate of 200 that the nursing home did not recognize. Anyone who thinks 9 minutes is arbitrary, is delusional. (or just plain stupid)
ReplyDelete7:36 an arbitrary number wasn't picked according to the National Fire Protection Associations 1710. It sets a standard of FOUR minutes for first responder and 8 minutes for ALS.
ReplyDeleteNFPA Standard
One of the key EMS benchmarks for municipal and career fire departments is the National Fire Protection Association's (NFPA) 1710 (Standard for the Organization and Deployment of Fire Suppression Operations, Emergency Medical Operations, and Special Operations to the Public by Career Fire Departments).
The NFPA 1710 standard is based upon a combination of accepted practices and more than 30 years of study, research, testing and validation. Members of the 1710 committee that developed the standard include representatives from various fire agencies and the International Association of City/County Managers (ICMA).
On all EMS calls, the NFPA 1710 standard establishes a turnout time of one minute, and four minutes or less for the arrival of a unit with first responder or higher level capability at an emergency medical incident. This objective should be met 90% of the time.
If a fire department provides ALS services, the standard recommends arrival of an ALS company within an eight-minute response time to 90% of incidents. This does not preclude the four-minute initial response.
The standard recommends that a "fire department's emergency medical response capability includes personnel, equipment, and resources to deploy at the first responder level with automated external defibrillator (AED) or higher treatment level." The standard also recommends that all firefighters who respond to medical emergencies be trained at a minimum to the first responder/AED level.
Another requirement in the standard is that all personnel dispatched to an ALS emergency should include a minimum of two people trained at the EMT-P level and two people trained at the EMT level-all arriving within the established times. Paramedics can come from different agencies.
Fire departments can have established automatic mutual aid or mutual aid agreements to meet many of the requirements of the standard.
It is clear response time standards are a vital part of the mission of any EMS agency. Key to the mission are the level of service provided and the time required to deliver that service.
Nobody seems to point out that KCFD is not throwing out any times. They are presenting the raw data as it is captured. MAST used to throw out times due to increment weather such as the recent snow storms we had. KCFD did not. MAST also used to throw out times due to construction, caller giving inadequate address, address not properly visible. If KCFD through out all those times they would have numbers just as good as MAST if not better.
ReplyDeleteYes, and I still believe in the tooth fairy and santa claus...
ReplyDelete7:29 glad you live in midtown, You'll need the faster ambulance response time when you get attacked or killed by a nigger neighbor or some coon stealing from your house or yard. ENJOY!!!
ReplyDeleteThe firemen have to pause their X-Box game at some point, take the spaghetti off of the stove and tell the girls they have visiting in the stations that they will be right back. No wonder response times are poor.
ReplyDeleteYou f'n idiots its real easy 70 to 80 percent of what you do is medical calls. Trade in some of those fire trucks and buy more ambulances. Then take those extra guys who dont run calls, ie the ones who sit in the station and cook because there isnt enough seats on the truck for them and make them drive the ambulances.
ReplyDeletePublic employee unions should be illegal.
ReplyDeleteThere should be no collective bargaining.
Someone has union envy. To bad you picked a shitty career.
ReplyDeleteUnions and collective bargaining didnt get us in this mess. Miss mangement for local and state goverments did! The truth is teachers, police, firefighters and social service workers are the most under payed and have the worst benifits around. Without collective bargaining and unions you would be lucky for anybody to do any of these jobs.
ReplyDelete1:24 is right. For as many years as I went to medic school, I could have become a non-union RN making about 30% more than I make as a union paramedic.
ReplyDeleteWell folks, in the spirit of the Pendergast-ish takeover of MAST, it’s time for a report card on the performance of an ambulance service that was bought and paid for by certain high-powered political players on the KCFD payroll. So let’s see what grades KCFD’s “new and improved” ambulance service earns:
ReplyDeleteEMS Response Times: F. Fail. You can argue all you want about the numbers, but it seems, KCFD is not getting the job done.
Medical Bureau: F. Fail. The world is seriously falling down around you, sir. The Titanic hit the iceberg about six months ago. Open your eyes to the very serious issues out there. Fast.
Medical Direction: F. Fail. How to Lie with Statistics 101. It’s a class everyone should take. Shame, shame, shame on you, sir.
Clinical Care: Epic, Critical Fucking Fail. You know what, it’s not our fault. We’re just responding to a lack of direction and a lack of leadership
24 hour shifts? 12 hour shifts? 8 hour shifts? Who the FUCK knows????
I believe Mother Goose describes the situation with EMS in Kansas City, best:
Little Bo Peep fell fast asleep;
And dreamt she heard them bleating;
But when she awoke, she found it a joke;
For still they all were fleeting.
If the tax payers only knew the TRUTH about KCFD and Local 42, its KCFD) budget is the biggest waste of money this city has!!!!!
ReplyDelete(3:00) Thats no shit!!!
ReplyDeleteWhy are response time so slow up North in "gods country"? All the dumb shits that call an Ambulance for simple crap that can be taken care of with a simple visit to a doctor instead of a Emergency room because they don't have to pay for the ambulance bill They have Missouri master-card. And the poor bastard up north is dying because of it. Oh I forgot they are entitled to it.
ReplyDeleteFEBRUARY
ReplyDeleteFirefighters went on 4,841 calls
199 were fires
Ambulances went on 7,203 calls
- ff's assisted on 38% of these
DAILY STAFFING
FIRE = 58 fire trucks/240 ff's
EMS = 28day/17night ambulances
FD has 1350 ff's for 58,000calls/yr
*Only 4% are actually fire related
EMS has 216 emts for 88,000calls/yr
FACTS:
-KCFD is hiring more firefighters
-They are NOT hiring EMT's or MEDICS
-They do NOT even have a plan to
train more Paramedics.
Why are you still terrorizing Lesa? The lady continues to be correct about the failure of Smokey Dyer.
ReplyDeleteThe hostile MAST takeover has brought nothing but a really screwed up ambulance system staffed by workers who are treated like crap.
The front-line KCFD fire fighters aren't so happy either.
Just who thought up this stew of incompetence? And who crunched the numbers? and just who sold it to the council?
And where are the savings? it is one year since the slight of hand took place. Where are the savings?
Susan, we all know there are no savings.
ReplyDeleteDumb self-serving under-examined idea that has done nothing but bring discord to the fire department and EMS people.
Bad juju.
People -- Read 3:58's comment. Read it closely. That explains a lot.
ReplyDelete358 couldn't be more accurate. That's the truth.
ReplyDeleteI grew up in the North. My parents grew up in the North. I don't believe it is "Gods Country." That is a cop-out term lazy, trash people use to justify not simply taking the time to do their dishes, and pick up their house, or sweep, or shower, or save their money, or spend $5 on some ortho bug killer instead of a 6 pack, or rims for their cars, or a big screen when their kids sleep in the living room on beach blankets. It is ok though, it isn't your fault..it is everyone else's.
ReplyDeleteBut don't worry 8:54. Your taxes subsidize the great response times in the ghetto.
ReplyDeleteFirefighters dont give a shit about response times. I work at city hall, I know.
ReplyDeleteFucking firefighters sit around and get paid to do nothing 8 days a month and get paid to sit home 1 day a month just so they can collect a 90% of earnings for life, taxpayer funded pension. They are SO over-staffed that everyday there are several of them that just get paid to be at the station because there is not enough seats on the fire trucks for them to even ride out on!! Hey, the economy is shit but no worries...the union has the power to hire hire hire more of them. They need more new firefighters to fund their over inflated pension that government's can't even afford!!!
ReplyDelete7:54, jealous a little bit? Here's an idea. I don't care what your fat ass does for a living, so why are you worried what other people do for a living?
ReplyDeletefuck the fire department.
ReplyDeleteSad thing is, there is a new academy full of youngsters starting April 24th, thanks to the e-tax passing.
ReplyDeleteall new academy classes are being cross trained for both fire and ems positions. Most will be placed on ambulances out of the academy. get your facts straight 1:08 and 3:58.
ReplyDelete9:41 the FD doesn't care about the e-tax. They have King Louie and Local 42 to threaten the city with a slowdown or strike if they don't get everything they want! Now that they have been given control of EMS, they are untouchable.
ReplyDeleteGood luck finding adequate training for those fire academy wannabe's. The ones that are already cross-trained don't even know what they are doing. They were taught everything in the ambulance is color coded, so if the medic needs something, just tell them what color to get. hahahahhaha Welcome to roughly 430 sq miles of geography to figure out only when you have a critical call and can't bug the medic to tell you to turn left or right. Oh wait, there is a computer map that will tell me what to do...shit...gotta watch the road...shit...we crashed, call another unit....shit, where are we again? Thank god I got my 4 weeks of EMT training in the academy.....
ReplyDeleteOh yea, and why don't I get a raise and promotion for driving the Ambulance when driving a fire truck is a promotion? And they only have to know their district. Not to mention the many more hours I spend behind the wheel than they do.
ReplyDelete