District of Columbia Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department
In June 2015, Jullette M. Saussy was named the medical director of DC Fire and EMS. On January 29, 2016, she announced her resignation from that position in a letter to Mayor Muriel Bowser. In her letter, she called the department's culture "highly toxic to the delivery of any semblance of quality pre-hospital medical care."
History of the District of Columbia Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department
Thompson quickly implemented a number of changes to improve service. Five emergency medical services personnel were disciplined (which included terminating one individual and allowing another to retire). A new credentials and certifications tracking system was put in place to ensure that EMS administrators were properly certified to hold their jobs. New procedures were implemented to ensure EMS personnel understood the scope of their jobs as well as basic patient care protocols, and to better evaluate firefighters, paramedics, and EMTs. Thompson also assigned an EMS supervisor to the dispatch center, and gave the supervisor the authority to reassign EMS crews to short-staffed parts of the city as needed. Ambulance crews were given more authority to determine which hospital a patient should be driven to, and procedural improvements were made to improve communication between dispatchers and EMS crews on the scene. GPS tracking devices were added to emergency medical vehicles to allow dispatchers to identify which EMS vehicle was closest to a call, which the department said would reduce response times even further. Although he ordered these changes, Thompson nonetheless felt that the Rosenbaum case "was an aberration" which did not require substantial alterations to DCFEMS procedures or staffing.