HILLCREST — A new EMS division has been deploying more emergency medical technicians to the borough’s busiest neighborhoods, part of an effort to decrease response time and increase ambulances across the city.
The Queens Tactical Response Group began on Jan. 31, bringing 87 EMTs to work borough-wide as opposed to assigning them to designated avenues and neighborhoods, according to the FDNY.
EMTs are deployed where they’re needed, traveling around Queens, the largest borough in the city. They are based out of their headquarters inside the Queens Hospital campus at 82-68 164 street, off of Goethals Avenue.
“It’s something that’s very different, that we haven’t done,” the group’s Chief Christine Mazzola, a 25-year veteran of the FDNY, said.
“They’re making a huge impact.”
While the overall goal is to reduce response times, statistics on how its exact impact in Queens wasn't immediately available.
The specialty group began as a pilot program in The Bronx last year and expanded to Queens as a permanent initiative, amid a rising number of medical emergencies. It costs approximately $3 million, according to the FDNY.
In 2016, FDNY EMTs set a record by responding to 1,440,268 emergencies — up .3 percent from 2015’s record-high calls.
Mayor Bill de Blasio boosted the FDNY’s budget to add more ambulances, with the department developing the Tactical Response Groups to meet that demand.
The center is staffed 24 hours a day on eight-hour tours, and get called out to answer any number of jobs — from vehicular crashes on highways to medical emergencies, Mazzola said. Tours overlap during the busiest times of day.
Their central location, near multiple highways, gives them an advantage when traveling across the borough.
“They can be going to the most critical assignments, or they can be responding to non-emergency injuries,” she said.
“Being able to mobilize and move around the division is very helpful to us.”
Mazzola said they’ve made an impact in only two months, and she’d love to see it expand across the city.
“It’s worked very well here in the short period of time we’ve had it here in Queens,” she said.
“I think it would be a great initiative to be able to expand.”
