Ranieri calls for pay parity, work-life balance, and recovery time

Related to the retention issue that is at hand, obviously pay parity is at the top of the list.

This is not something that is just occurring at the New York City level, but also at the state level and the national level.

Our EMT members need better pay.

They also need better work-life balance.

They need clear career paths for promotions, but also as well as incentives for them to remain in the field and treating patients at better pay and incentives, such as being a field training officer.

In addition, our EMS providers, a lot of the discussions we've heard today has been about efficiency.

Efficiencies are things that we discuss on with dealing with mechanisms and machines and systems.

These are people.

We should not be trying to wring an extra one or two response calls out of our EMTs and paramedics in the field.

We should be looking at what is causing them to have these high rates of call-outs.

A lot of times, unlike on the fire side, where if a firefighter responds and goes to a fire, they are given some time to recover, both physically and mentally, from that call.

However, if you've ever worked in EMS or in the hospital and you've had to work up a difficult arrest or a pediatric arrest that is both physically and emotionally demanding,

Our EMS members are often not given that same ability time to recover.

All right, so these are all things that obviously need to be brought up with the contract negotiations that are occurring.

One of the things I will point out, a lot of times we reference, that's been referenced throughout this hearing has been the Labor Relations Board.

I think it would be interesting to have them up here.

And speaking on these issues because it seems that the mayor is in support.

Obviously, the department itself has claimed their support.

The city council, who is the will of the New York City residents, are in support.

So we need to really identify where the hang-up is and what's preventing this from getting done.

I also want to address the issue with regards to that was brought up on the firefighter promotional exam.

It is not a promotion.

It is a change in career, a change in field.

Now, it is beneficial to have firefighters that are trained in medicine.

That does help because it is an expectation of the public that when a fire company responds, that they have medical training.

Just as it is an expectation of the public that our police have some medical training, and they do.

They're trained in basic CPR and first aid.

So that is a benefit.

However, particularly when we lose a paramedic to the fireside, those skills, those advanced life support skills, are not carried over to the firefighter level.

CFR units do not carry the ALS equipment that paramedics use, and they're not exposed to the continuing medical education that's needed for a true clinician that a paramedic is.

So that training, that experience is lost.

And as has been brought up before, the less experienced providers we have, the worse outcomes there are for our patients, both in the field and then when those patients end up going back to the hospital.

So a lot of the efficiency things that have been brought up really are trimming around the edges.

We need to acknowledge the fact that our society relies more on medicine today.

We have more calls, more patients, more complex patients.

Our EMT members that are trained today, even at the BLS level, the EMT today, right, carries twice as many medications today as they did 20 years ago when I first became an EMT.

That's medications that have to be trained on, how to administer, how to recognize the appropriate patients to give them to, the contraindications for it.

We're expecting more from our providers, both in their knowledge and their skills, and how many calls they respond to, but we're not adequately compensating them the right way.

So with that, I thank you for your time.

Thank you very much for your testimony.

We appreciate it.