Inglewood Adds 4th Paramedic Unit to Reduce Response Time

Inglewood has deployed a fourth paramedic unit to reduce the time it takes ambulances to reach seriously injured victims and compensate for the 90 minutes that rescue teams sometimes spend on the road to and from distant trauma centers.

Inglewood Fire Chief Robert Hartzog said the fourth paramedic unit was added because the response times for some patients had reached seven minutes from an optimum of four minutes.

“Seven minutes is not at all acceptable for a serious injury,” Hartzog said.

Inglewood’s rescue units, like others across the county, have become increasingly strained as the number of trauma centers have declined and there are fewer options available for treating the seriously injured.

The problem was made worse for Inglewood because of a directive last month from the county Department of Health Services. It restricts access to trauma centers to only those municipalities within the centers’ so-called “catchment areas,” county-drawn boundaries that define service areas for each hospital.

For Inglewood, the county directive means no more access to UCLA Medical Center in Westwood; leaving unrestricted access only to the trauma center at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center in Willowbrook.

At times when the Willowbrook facility temporarily closes to trauma cases, Inglewood paramedics may go to Harbor UCLA Medical Center near Torrance or, if that closes, the next nearest trauma center.

Even when paramedics do reach the trauma center at Martin Luther King, it is often inundated with other trauma cases just before it is forced to temporarily close, said Tom Crawford, an Inglewood paramedic. That forces them to stay with the patient even longer.

“Sometimes we have a gunshot victim in the hallway and there are two gunshots on the table and no more room,” he said.

If a first aid call comes in when all units are in use, which happens occasionally, Inglewood deploys a fire truck and uses private ambulance services if necessary.

“This is a countywide problem,” Hartzog said. “The county has to take steps to resolve it. We need a massive amount of funding to get trauma centers back on their feet.”

The new unit in Inglewood, which started working last Monday, responded to 35 calls in its first week and helped to relieve the 12 to 15 calls a day that the city’s other paramedic units receive, Hartzog said.

The two-person crew based at Fire Station No. 2 in north Inglewood will handle calls on the San Diego (405) Freeway, which has been more difficult for units in other parts of the city to reach because its ramps were rerouted for Century Freeway construction.

The new unit will operate until June with personnel formerly assigned to firefighting duties and a 10-year-old ambulance that had been in storage. The city expects to extend the program, city and fire officials said. It will cost an additional $200,000 in salary annually and $70,000 for a new rescue ambulance.

The county trauma network was established in December, 1983, to treat the critically injured who probably would die without immediate care. Hospitals in the network have surgeons and anesthesiologists standing by to operate on victims of car accidents or violent attacks who have life-threatening head, abdominal or chest injuries.

At its height, the network had 22 trauma centers in operation. Today there are three public trauma units and 10 private ones, some of those wavering towards closure. Those that have left say it is too costly to have their centers staffed and to treat trauma patients who frequently cannot afford to pay their bills.

County health officials have tried various ways to keep the remaining private hospitals in the trauma network.

“The boundaries were relaxed when the number of trauma hospitals began to decline,” said Virginia Price-Hastings, the county’s chief of paramedic and trauma programs. “Enforcing them again has helped to relieve pressure on the smaller private hospitals, preventing them from leaving the system, too.”