Ariola asks about mutual aid amid EMS staffing deficit
Ariola says EMS is short-staffed after a promotional ceremony removed 25% of the workforce and asks whether FDNY requested mutual aid as it did over July 4th. Maiano says no mutual aid has been requested because the policy requires sustained service below 25% for about 24 hours, and FDNY instead asks in-city volunteer agencies and REMSCO partners for additional ambulances.
But what I see is it's just consistently getting worse because we're not really looking at what the problem is, which is a lack of retention for our EMS workers because they're not getting paid enough to stay.
So right now, you're at a deficit for your EMS team because you just had a promotional exam.
I'm sorry, promotional ceremony.
So you lost 25% of your workforce, and the next class has not come out yet.
Have you requested mutual aid from other counties or cities to make up for the lack of EMS staffing like you did during the July 4th weekend?
So at this time, we have not requested mutual aid.
So our mutual aid policy is the way our mutual aid policy works is that when we have planned events like we did for Fourth of July at FIFA,
you know, and the events that were going on throughout the city, we made those requests earlier in the year because we were able to predict that that was that that was going to happen.
And we wanted to try and bolster up our system so we didn't have a lack of service.
Another way our mutual aid works is that when the system is overwhelmed and we reach a service level of less than 25% for a sustained period of time,
a long sustained period of time, which we generally use 24 hours as the mark, we would then make the request for mutual aid.
As of now, while we do have peaks, we have not hit that point of sustained under 25% for that period of time.
What we do do, I'm sorry, what we do do is when we do know that those are happening, we contact our volunteer agencies that are in the city.
We contact our partners at REMSCO at Greater New York, and we ask our voluntary partners who are here within the city to assist us and try and put out additional ambulances to try and put more units into the system.
Right.
So why wouldn't a mutual aid call go out knowing that you have, knowing in advance that you were going to lose 25% of the workforce to FDMY Proby School and also waiting for the next class to go out?
Wouldn't that be something that would trigger?
You asking for a mutual aid for that small period of time before the next class comes out?
Again, it's based on the demand on the system.
So if the demand on the system is low and it doesn't require or meet that 25% over a sustained duration period of time, we wouldn't make the request for mutual aid.