Frustrated Paramedics Seek Ouster of Fire Chief

The leader of Los Angeles’ paramedics union, upset over what he called deliberate attempts by city fire officials to sabotage the city’s new medical emergency dispatch system, disclosed Monday that his organization is seeking the ouster of Fire Chief Donald O. Manning.

Fred Hurtado, president of the 421-member United Paramedics of Los Angeles, complained that Manning and other Fire Department administrators have resisted turning critical managerial duties over to medical emergency personnel, causing the new system to break down. Hurtado also complained that fire officials have refused to follow procedures outlined under the new system.

Design Firm

In a related matter, a Utah-based company hired to design and implement the new system warned Manning and other city officials in a letter sent Monday that it would “begin to disassociate our firm” from the dispatch system as it is currently operated if it cannot be refined.

In its letter, the firm, Medical Priority Consultants, warned that it “does not have the time or the interest to work where we are not wanted.”

“To the contrary, our services are highly demanded and valued elsewhere.”

Manning could not be reached for direct comment, but a department spokesman quoted him as saying that Hurtado’s letter is part of a “longstanding dispute between the leadership” of the union “and the leadership of the Fire Department” dating back to the 1970s.

Manning “feels the (dispatch) system is a very good system and that it is well managed,” said the spokesman, Battalion Chief Ed Allen.

Hurtado said Monday that he formally sought Manning’s resignation in a June 24 letter to Kenneth Washington, president of the city Board of Fire Commissioners. “The department’s practice has been to give individual (medical emergency) supervisors monumental tasks without sufficient authority to carry them out,” Hurtado said in the letter. “This practice undermines implemented changes in (emergency medical service) policy, practice (and) procedure and results in the department’s real intent, a design for failure.”

Hurtado said in a phone interview Monday that the letter was written after “five years of frustration” of working with Manning.

“When he (Manning) was seeking the job, he assured the mayor, the commission, the City Council that he would make changes and asked that he be held accountable if he didn’t,” Hurtado said. “Well he hasn’t made the changes and he should be held accountable.”

In the past, Manning has openly expressed discomfort with some of the new medical emergency response procedures recommended by Jeff Clawson, the consulting group’s expert in emergency medical response.

Disparities in Workload

Changes in the dispatch system were ordered by city officials last year after the city administrative office audit showed that paramedics, who were supposed to share equal responsibility with firefighters for answering emergency medical calls, were actually performing 80% of the work--much of which did not require their specialized skills.

In a telephone interview Monday, Clawson said that his dispatching system is designed to train dispatchers to query callers with very specific, pre-written questions so that the dispatchers can determine the exact level of service needed. According to Clawson, the system conserves resources and makes it easier for paramedics and firefighters to save lives.

Clawson also confirmed Hurtado’s complaint that the procedures, in some cases, were deliberately not followed.

Clawson said that last Thursday, when his firm’s contract with the city expired, Fire Department officials told him that they wanted to continue working with the firm to refine the system. But when a management team from the firm flew to Los Angeles last Friday for a meeting with department personnel, they were met by an official who had no authority to negotiate with them, Clawson said.