“Some of us associated with DC Fire & EMS take exception to your recent coverage …”
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Read entire DC Fire & EMS response
On September 25 I linked to a DC Examiner report by Bill Myers about a report by DC’s inspector general doing a check up on EMS in the Nation’s Capital. Here is what I wrote:
From worst to first? DC report says not yet: Two years ago the DC inspector general issued a scathing report about the treatment city fire and EMS crews provided to dying former New York Times reporter David Rosenbaum. Since then, the administration of Mayor Adrian Fenty and Chief Dennis Rubin has pointed to great progress in EMS after decades of neglect. According to the Examiner’s Bill Myers (in an article we missed earlier in the week), the inspector general has taken another look at EMS and DC and doesn’t like what he sees. Here’s an excerpt from the article:
The D.C. inspector general reported in a recent audit, obtained by The Examiner, that the D.C. Fire and Emergency Management System, the city’s main rescue service: Hasn’t established anything like a quality “medical assurance” program to protect the health and welfare of District citizens; Still suffers from “excessive turnover in key management positions”; And still doesn’t have enough staffers to coordinate rescue services for the city’s some 600,000 some citizens.
A few days later I received an email from DC Fire & EMS Department’s Director of Public Information Pete Piringer. The message began with the headline above. Attached was a lengthy rebuttal to the report in the Examiner and STATter911.com’s synopsis of the article.
While I did no original reporting on this topic and just linked and quoted from the Examiner, I still think it important that you hear all views. Myers wrote in his article that Piringer couldn’t be reached for comment, so the original article did not have any response from the department.
In his response, Piringer asks me to “acknowledge that the Examiner has published an inaccurate and irresponsible portrait of the D.C. Fire & EMS Department.”
I do not believe I am in a position or are armed with enough knowledge to make such a judgment. Instead, as I usually do, I will let you be the judge.
Above, I have links to both Piringer’s response and the OIG’s report. Below is the beginning of the response attached to Piringer’s email:
As you can imagine we are greatly disappointed after reading Bill Myers’ September 20, 2009 article in the D.C. Examiner “D.C. emergency system still has ways to go, inspector general says”. The article contains numerous factual inaccuracies and completely mischaracterizes the findings of the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) Report OIG No. 09-I-0028FB: “Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department Report of Re-Inspection and Update on FEMS Response to the Assault on David E. Rosenbaum, September 15, 2009.”
We respectfully request that you re-evaluate your Blog report and acknowledge that the Examiner has published an inaccurate and irresponsible portrait of the D.C. Fire & EMS Department.
The Examiner article begins by stating: “the District’s emergency rescue team remains woefully unprepared to deal with citizens’ emergencies, an internal review has found.” Nowhere in the OIG report is such a statement made, and this characterization is completely at odds with the findings of the OIG, who noted, “of the 31 original [OIG] recommendations made; FEMS was found to be in full compliance with 12, in partial compliance with 9, not in compliance with 6, and 4 recommendations were overtaken by events.” Furthermore, Inspector General Willoughby notes in the report (9/15/09), “ I commend FEMS for the improvements evidenced by those recommendations complied with, and ask that FEMS managers be encouraged to work diligently and expeditiously to bring the agency into full compliance on the remaining issues and the new recommendations.”
