Queens Residents Face Long Waits For Paramedics, Report Finds

QUEENS, NY — Queens residents struggle most with long waits for paramedics to respond to serious medical emergencies, a recent report shows.

Paramedics took longer than 10 minutes to respond to more than half of the borough's nearly 62,000 serious emergencies, which include choking and heart attacks, the city's Independent Budget Office found.

Help failed to arrive in under 10 minutes for about 55 percent of serious emergencies in Queens last year. Some 5,000 of the responses in Queens, or about eight percent, took longer than 20 minutes — the highest rate of all five boroughs, according to the IBO report released Friday.

The city in 1996 set a goal for paramedics to respond in under 10 minutes to 90 percent of serious medical emergencies. Ambulance operations at that time had just moved from the city's public hospital system to the FDNY.

But the IBO found that paramedics only met that goal for about 54 percent of the roughly 314,000 serious medical emergencies citywide in 2018.

Highly trained paramedics are sent to the most dire medical emergencies, known as "Advanced Life Support" incidents. Emergency medical technicians handle less serious cases, according to the Independent Budget Office.

Patch editor Noah Manskar contributed reporting.