By Fabian Rodriguez
The majority of calls the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) receives are misdirected — only 1 percent of calls are associated with actual fires. Many calls come from people seeking treatment for nonurgent conditions, resulting in the wide misuse of emergency medical services (EMS), which reduces the quality of care received by those in serious need.
Researchers at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work will collaborate with the LAFD on a grant funded by the Southern California Clinical and Translational Science Institute to improve the city’s EMS by more effectively directing individuals to the appropriate services.
According to recent research, 15 percent of all EMS calls come from adults over the age of 50. “For older adults, we’d like to have services available so they don’t have to call 911,” said Ellen Olshansky, professor, chair of the department of nursing at USC and co-principal investigator of the project. “We hope to bring the percentage of misdirected calls from older adults down to about five percent.”