From Newsday (Long Island, NY) today: "Another legislative battle carrying over into this year revolves around a bill introduced by Legis. David Bishop (D-West Babylon) that would require volunteer fire and ambulance agencies to report their response times to the county. Despite its defeat in 2004, Bishop said he is confident he can address concerns raised by opponents."

Initially, volunteer agencies complained that being required to collect additional data would strain their budgets and interfere with patient care. Then they argued that more accurate data could increase the county's exposure to legal judgments. Speaking as someone who works in the fire/emergency industry I must say I understand the Volunteer organization's concerns about exposure to legal judgements. We're living in the most litigious society in the world. Reported response times would almost certainly end up in Newsday each year and many affected individuals would most certainly sue when things didn't work out as planned. The emergency response here is almost entirely volunteer, though there has been a move toward paid ambulance/EMTs lately in some areas (mostly the affluent areas). Most guys who join the volunteer fire department didn't join to drive grandma to the hospital (and aren't qualified to deal with it anyway) and so will turn down their pagers when they hear that call. (Fire and ambulance are on the same call system here).

My boss is a notable exception who decided late in life to go back for his EMT certification and rides with a local ambulance company.

Another consideration is the little known fact that many of the ambulance calls that emergency teams respond to are thinly veiled free trips to scheduled hospital visits for folks without cars or money for fares. The departments know who the habitual abusers are and respond accordingly. Just like the police know who the local troublemakers are. This is hard to assess and might not show up on a report of straight response times.

However, its hard to ignore three or four repeated calls over 45 minutes for a signal 16 on the fire radio, then hearing driver needed knowing that it means someone's golden hour may have expired. This is rare near me, but the radio is county-wide and there's well over a million residents of the county.

Newsday prints the yearly school report cards based on the reported test scores, graduation and college admission rates of all the Island schools but I always felt this to be of dubious merit since for one thing the schools are reporting on themselves, and so have a motive to massage the results to their own fiscal purposes. I fear a report of emergency response times (there was one a couple years back that made a big stir) would be inaccurate and not as helpful as hoped for.

I just don't think agencies, whether they are state run or just state funded should be reporting on themselves. I also think that its really important to use several different methods of assessment. Perhaps a third party assessment would be good? Then maybe have a mentor system in place where the best departments would be paid to travel to the worst areas and train them or help put in place remidiation?