DC MEDICAL DIRECTOR DROPS BRUTAL RESIGNATION LETTER, CALLS OUT OFFICIALS:
The medical director of D.C.’s fire department resigned in a scathing letter to Mayor Muriel Bowser, charging that “people are dying needlessly” in “a highly toxic” culture where reform is impossible.
Poor response times plague the District fire department. Bowser hired Dr. Jullette Saussy seven months ago for the specific purpose of reforming the department. Confirmed in November and named EMS Medical Director and Assistant Fire Chief, Saussy is already fed up with the D.C. system. In her resignation letter to the Mayor dated January 29 she rips the culture of a department that she argues values bureaucratic structure over meaningful medical reforms, reports WTOP.
“The culture of the DC Fire and EMS Department is highly toxic to the delivery of any semblance of quality pre-hospital patient care,” Saussy writes in her letter. “EMS reform, even attempts to make basic changes, are met with resistance from the top down.”
Saussy accuses the fire department of fostering a “feel good” environment which relies on manipulated or incomplete data that serves as their measure of performance. She says it creates a false reality within the department, where people are not properly overseen and issues fail to ever be addressed.
Hasn’t a false reality in the District of Columbia been a given since about 1913 or so? (And isn’t that true in most if not all Democrat-run cities?)
(Via Walter Olson.)