David Rosenbaum was taken to a hospital across the city — even though another hospital was closer — because a paramedic had a toothache and wanted to get some medicine from her nearby home later.
The toothache was just one of the many facts including in a scathing Inspector General’s report issued Friday and detailing “an unacceptable chain of failure” in responding to the attack that eventually claimed Rosenbaum’s life.
Rosenbaum, 63, a retired New York Times journalist, was picked up after a mugging near his upper Northwest home Jan. 6.
The report, given to government leaders Thursday night and made public Friday, said the Rosenbaum case “suggest[s] alarming levels of complacency and indifference” among the people charged with treating the District’s sick and wounded.
Among other things, the report found that paramedics assumed Rosenbaum was drunk and didn’t treat him properly or take his vital signs.
It also found that some of the responding paramedics weren’t properly trained. Nor did staff at Howard do anything but a perfunctory examination.
The report gave decent marks to the emergency dispatch, but everyone else involved in the case — from the D.C. police to the medical examiner — were roundly criticized.
Public officials were horrified by what they read. District Council Judiciary Committee Chair Phil Mendelson, D-at large, has called for a systemic overhaul of the fire department. He’s also scheduled hearings for Monday.
D.C. Fire and EMS officials conducted their own review of their response and initially reported that they had gone by the book in treating Rosenbaum.
After Friday’s report came out, though, officials backpedaled, saying that ambulance staff hadn’t cooperated with internal investigators.
Fire department spokesman Alan Etter said that officials in his agency have already implemented some of the report’s suggested reforms — including training firefighters as paramedics — and will review the report to find other suggestions.
Etter refused to comment on any disciplinary action taken against the women identified in the report as EMT 2, who referred to the call with an obscenity and then insisted on taking Rosenbaum to Howard even though Sibley Hospital was closer.
That ambulance got lost on the way to Rosenbaum because the paramedics didn’t know the address, the report states.
