By Anna Haislip
The Denver Post
Copyright 2008 The Denver Post
DENVER — Denver Health Medical Center chief executive Patricia Gabow told City Council members Monday the hospital will add language to its paramedic contracts to standardize the way ambulance response times are calculated.
In 2004, Denver Health started calculating paramedic responses from the time an ambulance is assigned to an emergency; however, Gabow said, the change was never updated in its city contract.
The paramedic’s union last week took the hospital to task for its reporting method, saying it allows the hospital to vastly understate the actual time it takes an ambulance to arrive at an emergency after a call for help.
The city contract was updated last in 1997, when it that stated the clock on paramedic response times should start ticking when an ambulance dispatcher receives the call from the police or fire department.
Gabow said a two-tier system that encompasses both methods has been used to calculate quarterly response-time reports. Times are collected from when 911 calls are answered and from when a fire truck or ambulance is assigned to an emergency. She did not say when the calculation procedure would be standardized, but she said Denver Health is in the process of updating the contract language to reflect the hospital’s 2004 policy.