Can You Still Depend on 911?

Credit: timesnews.net

We are nearly halfway through 2017, yet many municipalities across the United States are still struggling to recover from the Great Recession of 2008. With their tax bases dwindling, and in some cases nearly gone, dozens of local governments have slashed budgets to the point that essential services are barely adequate to meet the needs of the communities they serve. In some areas, lawmakers have cut the number of law enforcement, fire department and Emergency Medical Services personnel drastically. What’s more, many states are consolidating and privatizing important aspects of the EMS system. This includes the call centers that dispatch emergency assistance when someone calls 911.

Privatization and Consolidation

The concept of privatizing 911 services dates back to the late 1990s. At that time, Pennsylvania’s Northampton County consolidated 96 separate law enforcement, EMS and fire department call centers into one central site. Rather than take on the financial burden of doing this themselves, county officials outsourced the job to a  private firm. Several other local governments, including Orlando and Dade counties in Florida, soon followed suit.

But privatizing government services faced a lot of opposition. It wasn’t until after the financial crisis that the idea really took hold. Then, strapped local governments began looking for any solution that would allow them to continue delivering essential public services at a cost they could afford. Private sector employers could operate more efficiently, they believed, in part because they operate on a performance matrix that ties productivity to pay.

According to a 2013 statement by Lawrence Consalvos, President and Chief Operating Officer of iXP Corp, “We have staffing requirements and call time requirements. We’ll step up to those standards contractually.” The company passes those performance requirements on to employees, which theoretically leads to shorter call times and improvements in quality. But they can also backfire if rushed employees cut calls short in order to maintain a pay grade or avoid getting fired.

Credit: San Jose Fire Department

Privatization Misses the Mark

Fast forward to 2017, and the era of consolidating and privatizing 911 services is in full swing. What’s more, private equity firms have become a larger presence on the EMS landscape, taking over several dozen 911 dispatch centers and ambulance companies across the United States. Unlike other for-profit companies, these firms have little experience in providing emergency services. In fact, their main skill set is making money — a goal they accomplish with a “mix of cost cuts, price increases, lobbying and litigation,” according to the New York Times.

The results, according to the Times report, have been disastrous. Several ambulance companies owned by private equity firms have gone bankrupt, leaving parts of the country with no EMS service at all. One example: Last February, TransCare EMS, owned by the private equity firm Patriarch Partners, abruptly closed its doors, leaving many cities on the East Coast high and dry. 

Government Oversight Falls Short

Even when consolidated services have remained under government control, the results have been less than ideal. Employees in centralized call centers are far away from the areas they serve, and their lack of knowledge of local geography has had disastrous results. In Vermont, David Seguin died while the police searched in vain for the wrong address, which was provided by a 911 operator hundreds of miles away. Another Vermont man died because “Vermont State Police could not tell if the address was Route 30 North or Route 30 South,” said firefighter Lucas Hall. “It took them over 10 minutes to figure it out. By the time…we got on scene, the person was dead.”

Economically disadvantaged areas are hardest hit by service cuts
Credit NPR.org.

Other parts of the country have suffered as well. Staffing shortages plague many cities. For example, in Denver, Colorado, dispatchers often work 16-hour shifts and 60-hour weeks. And in eastern Connecticut, consolidation went so badly that lawmakers moved to undo the decision just one year after it went into effect. 

Sadly, even as more issues around consolidation and privatization of essential services come to light, little is likely to change anytime soon. The Trump administration has promised to cut funding to dozens of federal programs. And these cuts will reverberate at the state and local level for years to come. Thus, it seems likely that financially strapped communities will continue to struggle to meet the needs of the citizens who rely on them. And private companies will happily step in to fill the gap.