Click here, here and here for previous coverage of Stephanie Stephens case
DC Fire & EMS Department officials confirm an EMS crew has been disciplined for failing to take a woman with trouble breathing to the hospital after she called 911 on December 22. Kimberly Kelsey of the 900 block of Rhode Island Avenue, NW was transported to a hospital only after she called 911 a second time, about 56 minutes after her first call.
According to Kelsey, crews from a paramedic engine company and an ambulance refused to take her to the hospital because they determined she was not symptomatic.
On the second response, a paramedic supervisor treated Kelsey for her chronic asthma and accompanied the woman to Georgetown University Hospital. Kesley says she was put into the intensive care unit and spent a week at the hospital.
Department spokesman Pete Piringer confirms that supervisor immediately followed up on Kimberly Kelsey’s complaint. According to Piringer, the supervisor counseled the crew and disciplinary action was taken.
Piringer also confirms there was no patient care report filled out on the initial response.
This incident has parallels to the case of 2-year-old Stephanie Stephens who died on February 11 at Children’s National Medical Center. An investigation is still underway into why a medic crew did not transport Stephens to a hospital after her mother’s first call to 911 a day earlier. It was about nine hours later that a second call to 911 resulted in the little girl being taken to the hospital by paramedics.
The call to the little girl’s apartment occurred in the middle of the second of back-to-back blizzards in Washington. Stephens’ family said the girl died of pneumonia.
A paramedic and EMT have been removed from field operations while the probe continues. Numerous sources confirm, like the December case, the EMS crew failed to fill out a patient care report or get a signed release from the girl’s mother.
STATter911.com has been provided internal department emails showing regular notifications to supervisors about missing electronic patient care reports. The emails from January and November each show at least 30 missing reports. The department has not been able to tell us the percentage of reports that are missing because of technical issues versus those that first responders failed to submit.
Also on STATter911 …
- DC Police conducting review of paramedic who provided care to dying two-year-old girl. Homicide detectives will try determine if the EMS worker was criminally negligent. – March 11, 2010
- UPDATED: Sources say DC medic did not get release or fill out paperwork in death case. Crew suspended from field work. Little girl died hours after a 2nd crew transported her to hospital. – March 4, 2010
- UPDATE: DC Chief Dennis Rubin takes full responsibility for mistakes made surrounding the death of two-year-old girl. Supervisors now involved in non-transports. Read his testimony & watch report on City Council hearing. – March 12, 2010
- Children’s Hospital doctor blasts DC Fire & EMS Department over death of child. Calls lack of transport ‘inexcusable’. Refers to case as a ‘pediatric Rosenbaum’. – March 9, 2010
Ok, if these folks just don’t care or dislike their jobs enough to self destruct like this or even think they are “untouchable” no matter what they do then just get out of the way of the people behind you that want the job and will do it the right way!
How can you discipline someone if no complaint was ever filed?
say it again anonymous