While they are improving, the wait times for ambulances to leave hospitals in D.C. and get back on the streets for more calls still need work, according to new data.
According to numbers released by the D.C. Fire and EMS Foundation, on average, ambulances in the District have a 52-minute drop time, which is the time from when an ambulance arrives at a hospital to drop off a patient to when it goes back into service to respond to 911 calls.
In September, it was around 70 minutes.
“It is progress, but not ideal,” Amy Mauro, the foundation’s executive director, told WTOP. “We’d love to see the city working with the fire department and the hospitals to see those numbers continue to go down.”
While it is improving, it is still far from the 2016 drop times, which the foundation said hovered around 45 minutes.
Mauro revived the foundation earlier this year to help with progress in the department and raise resources for its employees. Mauro said there is great importance in making this process of dropping patients at hospitals more efficient.
“If there are ambulances that are delayed and getting out of the hospitals, then it could potentially affect how quickly you get the resources that you need from emergency medical services,” she said.
Other data released by the foundation shows D.C. Fire and EMS arrived to about 60% of calls in fewer than five minutes in May.
The department saw a low in December, when only about 45% of calls arrived in that time.
