I-Team: More extreme ambulance delays — Will anything change?

CLEVELAND (WJW) – The FOX 8 I-Team has uncovered more extreme delays sending residents an ambulance even in high-priority emergencies.

It’s a chronic problem with Cleveland EMS we’ve revealed many times before, often due to short-staffing.

So, we did a spot check on calls with no ambulance to send to see if anything has changed.

From February to March, records show 169 calls held at least 20 minutes with no ambulance to send. Also, more than two dozen of those involved critical or potentially life-threatening emergencies.

On more than one 911 call, we heard a dispatcher telling a citizen, “Due to our current call volume, we are unable to dispatch an ambulance at this time.”

“So, you don’t have an estimated time of arrival?” one woman said.

Dispatch, then, tells the caller,

“I mean, it could be 20 minutes or like four hours. We’re just very busy,” dispatch said.

In one case with a delay, a caller asking for an ambulance said of her husband, “he’s having excruciating back pain.”

In another case with a delay, a caller said, “I’m just in a lot of pain. I can’t walk. It’s just hard. I’m in a lot of pain.”

Still another said “my husband cannot catch his breath, he needs oxygen.”

“I collapsed. I lost all my breath. I couldn’t breathe,” Ken Jaworski told the I-Team.

Records show he waited for an ambulance on the city’s southwest side for more than an hour. Jaworski points out firefighters got there quickly and they gave him oxygen.

But, Ken is now stunned to learn how often we’ve found Cleveland EMS delays.

“I hope if anybody else calls, they don’t lose their life because EMS can’t get there on time,” he said.

Once more, we asked the city what’s being done about this.

Deputy Commissioner Chrsitopher Chapin released a statement.

“The Division of EMS is constantly striving to ensure that the most critical calls receive the quickest response through utilization of call prioritization, the first responder program and dynamic stationing of units. We also continue to work with our partners to reach out to frequent utilizers of the 911 system in an effort to ensure their needs are met and reduce the demand for 911 responses. Through our lateral transfer program, we have added 16 paramedics to the division that have been deployed to the field in 2024 and we currently have 5 additional new employees that are in training. We are preparing to start another class in the early part of the third quarter of this year. We have had 5 individuals leave the division this year to pursue other opportunities and, in addition, we had 2 others retire after 31 years of service.”

At the same time, the city has spoken often of doing more hiring and getting ambulances first to the most critical calls. Still, we keep finding many more delays even in high-priority emergencies.

We also checked back on where things stand with a new plan to address frequent EMS callers demanding an ambulance for minor problems that tie up medics.

“We have not permanently assigned someone,” said the deputy commissioner. “We are currently using multiple employees to gauge the effectiveness of our model before we create a permanent assignment.”