Task force: EMS lacks oversight

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - The District lacks sufficient resources to make sure paramedics and firefighters can care for patients properly, according to a task force commissioned after the city’s botched response in the death of a New York Times journalist.

The department overseeing Emergency Medical Services operates almost entirely on federal grants and a mayoral EMS advisory committee has not met in five years, said Paul Maniscalco, head of the EMS task force.

Maniscalco learned of the inefficiencies during a presentation by Beverly Pritchett, the senior deputy director of the Department of Health’s Emergency Health and Medical Services Administration.

The EHMSA is the agency in charge of overseeing the emergency services.

“The facts were astounding and alarming,” said Maniscalco, past president of the National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians.

Among other findings:

» Nearly all of the District’s EHMSA’s $8 million budget comes from grants; $425,000 is provided by the District.

» The health department does not inspect medical equipment on the District’s 33 fire engines.

The EMS commission was created after an inspector general blamed city emergency crews for bungling their response to the fatal beating of New York Times journalist David Rosenbaum.

Gregg Lord, of The George Washington University’s Homeland Security Policy Institute, said the amount that the District invests in EMS oversight is “pennies on the floor,” and indicative of the problems in the Rosenbaum response.

Pritchett told The Examiner on Monday that federal government has nearly halved the amount of grants awarded to the District from $10 million to about $6.1 million.

“Do I need additional resources? Absolutely,” Pritchett told The Examiner on Monday.

“Is it a federal grant responsibility? Absolutely not. It’s a local responsibility.”

The mayor’s EMS committee went on hiatus after there were some changes in responsibility between the Health Department and Fire/EMS, said Mayor Anthony Williams’ spokesman Vince Morris.

“The group is in the process of being reinvigorated,” Morris said.

The findings were first reported by The Washington Times.

smccabe@dcexaminer.com