Legislation sponsored by Assemblywoman Annette Quijano that would enable 9-1-1 operators to quickly make additional requests for ambulatory service if the first call out for aid does not receive a timely response was released Monday by an Assembly committee.
The bill would establish a standard operating procedure for 9-1-1 dispatchers that requires them to call for mutual aid assistance within 10 minutes if the basic life support ambulance service provider initially contacted does not respond.
“From the moment a 9-1-1 dispatcher answers a call, every moment after that is valuable to saving the life of the person or persons on the other end,” said Quijano (D-Union). “Mere minutes can make the difference between life and death in a situation. If the first responder does not respond, there should be a second call ready to be made for back up.”
Under current law, the ambulance service provider initially called to an emergency must notify the dispatcher within 10 minutes. The dispatcher must issue at least one additional call at five minutes from the initial call to ensure the call was received. The bill would enable the dispatcher to concurrently contact a mutual aid basic life support ambulance on all emergency calls when an ambulance provider fails to respond to a dispatched call.
“If the dispatcher has access to mutual aid assistance, then time shouldn’t be wasted on waiting for a return call,” said Quijano. “This is a common sense bill that would support the professionals with a very important responsibility to the public.”
The bill was released by the Assembly Homeland Security and State Preparedness Committee chaired by Quijano. TLS.
most people dont know this but our 911 system in ocean county fails all the time. in fact during sandy and the following snow storm out 911 system went down entirely ! where it is great that they are putting this plan into affect frst we need to make sure that the 911 system can funtion during times of emergency when we actually need it !
Right so absolutely nothing will change as this is already the procedure in place. Can we focus on things that actually need to be changed?
A lot of this has to do with politics. Certain squads won’t call others because they feel threatend. I personally know of a sqaud that had an “unofficial” policy of not calling a specific paid service in fear of losing their jobs to the paid service. They would rather teams further away get the call then risk losing their jobs which would delay care to a person in need.
#1
You don’t need to call 911 if your lights go out or if a branch falls from a tree. Be a man!!
Where do you get 10 mins responding time from?? Kudos #2 This person must not understand the actual call procedures behind 9-1-1 and the people that do it
To #1
I was in the 911 communications center during Sandy and the snow storm working and at no point did 911 go down, so please hold your comments on things you know nothing about. If you had trouble getting through to 911 during Sandy or the snow storm it’s because for days at any given minute there were over 1000 people calling 911. When you call 911 because a tree fell or a wire snapped but its no threat to life or property you are wasting resources and bogging down the 911 phone system. If the 1000’s of people who called 911 at the same time because a tree fell across their lawn/the street/their car or wires fell off the pole but are not sparking or burning or —>the power is out<— held their calls and called their respective DPW's, JCP&L or Verizon then real emergency's wouldn't have had to wait on hold for an operator. We are human beings and there is a limited number of us that on an average day can manage the call volume, however during a disaster of that magnitude we did the best we could.
So please do not spread false information 911 never went down but it was inundated and abused with non-emergency calls.
AWESOME #6
number 6 it is a fact and jack kelly even commented that the 911 system went down so you are a perfect example on whats wrong with 911.. you dont even know there was a problem., do we even want to talk about the county radio system ? one of the worst i have ever seen. and i am speaking from experiance.