The District Council member charged with overseeing D.C.’s emergency response says that a systemic overhaul of the fire and ambulance will be required to fix problems illustrated by a report on journalist David Rosenbaum’s death.
“This issue will not go away by firing somebody,” said Phil Mendelson, D-at large, chair of the District Council’s Judiciary Committee. “This is an issue about quality of care.”
He was reacting to an inspector general’s review of the response to David Rosenbaum’s mugging. Rosenbaum, 63, was left for dead on the sidewalk near his upper Northwest home Jan. 6 and died two days later.
It took an ambulance extra minutes to reach him because the drivers didn’t know how to get to upper Northwest. The inspector general found that routine lifesaving measures weren’t taken by responding fire and ambulance and that he wasn’t properly checked by doctors at Howard University Hospital.
The inspector general’s report referred to the response as “an unacceptable chain of failure” that stretched from the first medics on the scene to the D.C. Medical Examiner’s Office.
“These multipleindividual failures during the Rosenbaum emergency suggest alarming levels of complacency and indifference which, if systemic, could undermine the effective, efficient and high quality delivery of emergency services to District residents and visitors,” the report states.
Mendelson’s committee will hold hearings on the matter today, but Mendelson says he’s convinced the problems are systemwide.
Asked whether he thought Fire Chief Adrian Thompson should be fired, Mendelson said, “I’m not going there,” but added, “I think the challenge for the chief is how he responds to this.”
Whatever reforms are undertaken, the Rosenbaum matter won’t close even with the conviction of the two men charged with his murder. Wayne Cohen, a prominent plaintiff lawyer in the District, says that the inspector general’s report will give ammunition for a malpractice claim.
