I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
More than half of Detroit’s ambulances are out of service and in need of repair and the city has been unable to fill 57 positions for paramedics and emergency medical technicians.
At a Monday city council hearing on EMS problems officials learned that 27 of the city’s 46 ambulances are out of service because the city relies on just one repair shop.
The Detroit Free Press reports:
EMS has money to fill 57 vacancies for paramedics and emergency medical technicians, but has yet to hire anyone this year. The reason, EMS officials said, is because they can’t get enough people to apply for the positions.
On average, 39% of EMS vehicles are out of service, EMS Chief Jerald James said. The 19 EMS rigs that are on the road today are two fewer than what is needed on an average day, James said.
Safety officials also told council members that city ambulances are often dispatched to deal with minor medical problems.
To put Detroit’s EMS issues in perspective Fox 2 compares the Detroit system to Cleveland’s.
In Cleveland, the 911 dispatch center is run on a computer-aided dispatching system that allows for call prioritizing, pre-arrival instructions and the tracking of ambulances and support vehicles. What is more, the city stopped sending ambulances to calls of hemorrhoids and Viagra overdoses a year ago.
Response times as a consequence are between 7 and 8 minutes for emergencies and 15 minutes overall, according to Stephen Palek, president of the EMS union in Cleveland. In Detroit, there is little ability to prioritize a heart attack versus a blood blisters call since the software purchased long ago by the city is not compatible with its computers. In Detroit it can be first come first served.
In Detroit, no one has bothered to accurately monitor the response times for nearly a decade, the last audit occurring in 2004. Back then it was 12 minutes and back then the city had more than 300 paramedics.
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