"Report: 911 response times longer than reported for years"

News Article
Article from the Portland Tribune. June 8, 2017.
Published

By: Jim Redden

Emergency 911 calls in the region have taken longer to answer than reported for many years, according to a report released by the city ombudsman on Wednesday.

Although the Bureau of Emergency Communications (BOEC), which operates the center, says the problem was fixed late last year, the report says the underreporting allowed BOEC to wrongly claim it was exceeding performance standards, despite chronic staffing shortages.

"Contrary to the bureau's assertions, it is performing well below accepted standards," reads the ombudsman report, titled, "911 Hold Times Longer Than Reported."

Ombudsman Margie Sollinger also notes BOEC is planning to upgrade the 911 system in November, and she is not sure the reporting times will remain accurate afterward.

"The upgraded phone system is going to replace three of BOEC's current systems, and I have no idea if the upgraded system will work as intended," says Sollinger, who works in the City Auditor's Office.

The problem was caused by a procedure enacted by BOEC in 2004 to reduce the high number of unintentional 911 calls from cell phones.

The Reno Solution

Called the Reno Solution and used by similar centers around the country, the procedure requires people calling 911 on their cell phones to respond to recorded prompts before being connected to an operator. If no operator is available, the caller is placed on hold in the emergency queue until an operator is available.

BOEC has a performance goal of answering 90 percent of 911 calls within 20 seconds. It has consistently reported exceeding that goal, despite chronic staffing shortages. For example, last year BOEC reported answering 99.6 percent of all calls within 20 seconds. The bureau also reported averaging one second to answer 911 calls.

But, according to the report, the wait time for such calls was only recorded as the time it takes the operator to answer the call. It did not include the time 911 callers spent responding to the prompts or waiting in the queue.

Because 75 percent of 911 calls now come from cell phones, that significantly underestimated the real average time it took operators to answer them.

"The length of time it takes to answer a 911 call is supposed to be counted from the moment a call is received by the 911 Center to the point in time when an individual operator gets on the line. Since 2004, however, the bureau has used an incomplete measure of the answer time for cell phone calls to 911, resulting in an inaccurate depiction of its performance," the report says.

When the city Bureau of Technology Services recalculated the actual hold times for the report, it found only 67.8 percent of all 911 calls were answered within 20 seconds between December 2016 and April 2017 — not the 99.6 percent BOEC has reported. And it found the average time to answer a call was 23 seconds — not the 1 second that had been claimed.

Bureau knew of problem

BOEC was aware of the problem well before last year's fix. According to a November 2015 email cited in the report, a former BOEC director had been informed of the problem when the Reno Solution was implemented.

"What this means is that all call-hold times reported at any time in the past as they related to cell phone calls has been incorrect," reads the Nov. 19, 2015, email. It was written by BOEC Operations Manager Lisa St. Helen to the staff of former Commissioner Steve Novick, who was in charge of the bureau at the time. St. Helen is now the BOEC interim director.

Despite that, the problem was not fixed for another year.

Although a city agency, BOEC provides 911 services to first responders throughout the region. One of its key performance measurements is how quickly operators answer emergency calls.

"The length of time on hold directly influences how rapidly paramedics, firefighters and police officers respond to individual emergencies and large-scale disasters. Minutes can be the difference between a life saved or a life lost," the report says.

Oversight at issue

According to the report, since its creation by intergovernmental agreements decades ago, BOEC has existed outside the normal confines of city governance. It has made important policy and operational decisions without City Council review or public input, "begging the question whether its unparalleled level of autonomy has come at the expense of public safety."

Wednesday's report follows a December 2016 report in which the ombudsman found that BOEC was losing track of tens of thousands of cell phone calls to 911 every year because of the Reno Solution. Whenever a 911 caller is disconnected before reaching an operator, BOEC policies require they be called back. But the earlier report found that was not happening with all disconnected cell phone calls. In fact, operators were not even being notified of cell phone calls that were disconnected after the caller completed the prompts to reach an operator and had been placed in the queue.

"Taken together, the two reports demonstrate that the Bureau of Emergency Communications needs greater scrutiny from City Council and the public," the report says.

The report recommends the council ensure BOEC's data-collection procedures are accurate by either holding a public hearing or government accountability transparency results session, tasking the Technology Oversight Committee with the responsibility of overseeing significant technological changes to 911 service, and reassessing staffing needs. The council also should revisit the intergovernmental agreement that created BOEC and consider making it a more conventional city agency, the report says.

"The Reno Solution was supposed to be a fix of sorts, but it ended up having all kinds of unintended consequences," Sollinger says.

In a June 2 letter of response, St. Helen said she was confident last November's fix had solved the problem and the upgrade scheduled for November would continue recording call times accurately.

"The bureau is aware of and has been working to rectify the technological issues that have led to incorrect statistics and performance reporting," the interim director wrote.

In a June 1 letter of response, Mayor Ted Wheeler said he takes the report seriously and will present it to the council. Wheeler took oversight of BOEC from Commissioner Amanda Fritz earlier this year when he assumed control of all city agencies as next year's budget was coming to the council.

"Since taking all of the bureaus back, I have become aware of issues such as the findings of the ombudsman's report. I will engage the bureau leadership, employees, and other jurisdictional partners to ensure that Portland is providing the best service to the community. I am also committed to addressing these issues fully, holistically, and seeing that necessary changes are made," Wheeler said.