Denver Health Changes Emergency Response Policy

DENVER --

After a CALL7 investigation exposed problems with the response to the crash of Continental Flight 1404, Denver Health Medical Center has instituted a new policy to deal with plane crashes and other mass casualty incidents.

Previously, the 7News investigation found, there was no policy to deal with red alerts. After our three-month investigation, Denver Health has implemented a policy requiring at least four ambulances to be sent to a red alert for a plane crash.

Those ambulances will be sent Code 10, the emergency response with lights and sirens. During the Dec. 20, 2008 crash of 1404, the first ambulance was sent Code 9, the non-emergency designation that requires the ambulance to maintain normal speeds and not use lights or sirens.

The new policy also requires that medical helicopters be sent to respond to the crash. Helicopters were not sent in the response to December’s accident.

After initially saying they were proud of their response to Flight 1404, Denver Health officials conceded that they could have done a better job.

“Personally, and I know I speak for a number of people …, (I) will never be satisfied or say this is acceptable,” Dr. Christopher Colwell, the medical director who oversees the paramedic division, said during a meeting taped for a 7News special investigation “33 Minutes to Runway 34 Right” that ran over the weekend. “It has to be better.”

Denver Health officials did not return repeated calls Monday to comment on the changes, but documents obtained by 7News detail the new policy proposal.

National experts and paramedics said Denver Health’s response was unacceptable and it was just luck that no one died in the plane crash.

“To say that no one died and you're proud of your response is really to stick your head in the sand and say a problem doesn't exist," James Sideras, a nationally recognized expert who spent more than 25 years in emergency services where he coordinated the response to a major mass-casualty incident, told CALL7 Investigator Tony Kovaleski.

The 7News special showed that it took 33 minutes for the first ambulance to respond to the airplane crash. It took 40 minutes for three ambulances to arrive at Denver International Airport and there were five ambulances at the scene 50 minutes after the accident. It took a full hour for 10 ambulances to arrive at DIA.

The average response was 17 minutes for each ambulance to arrive from when it was dispatched, which is nearly twice the national standard of responding in less than nine minutes to a call.

Paramedics’ union president Bob Petre said Denver Health’s poor response to the plane crash was caused by top hospital officials who have not staffed ambulances properly to cover the city.

“They are trying to conserve resources they have which are inadequate to do the job,” Petre said.

Denver Health has a contract to provide ambulance service for the city, and Mayor John Hickenlooper promised that he will improve ambulance response times.

“When you’ve got a red alert, you still need to send the resources immediately that that situation is going to need,” Hickenlooper said. “It’s unacceptable. You can’t have from the moment the crash happens, an ambulance there in 33 minutes. That will never happen again.”

The CALL7 special follows nearly a year of reporting on failures of ambulance response times at Denver Health.

The stories, which showed slow response times, inadequate staffing and management's inability to deal with patients to make repeated calls for fabricated emergencies, have forced the hospital to act.

After 7News reported that a Parker man died after waiting more than 30 minutes for transport to a hospital, Denver Health stationed an ambulance at DIA in January.