Nassau County Comptroller Howard Weitzman warned at a recent news conference that the Nassau County Police Department's Emergency Ambulance Bureau is not adequately prepared to meet the growing demand for ambulance services in the county.

"Nassau's police ambulance bureau already handles the majority of the county's ambulance calls, and that number is growing as Nassau's voluntary ambulance providers have found their resources increasingly strained," Weitzman said. "Unfortunately, our audit of the police department's ambulance bureau found serious deficiencies in technology, equipment and in the training and supervision of ambulance personnel, as well as a critical lack of record-keeping, that will hamper the department's ability to meet the growing demand.

"Incredibly, we found that the police ambulance bureau does not maintain statistics on response time, and therefore cannot even say how quickly it responds to medical emergencies. When it comes to medical emergencies, quick response is the whole ball game."

In order to address these deficiencies, Weitzman called for the immediate implementation of a program to monitor and assess response times, improved staff training and supervision, and technology upgrades aimed at improving response times. "The bureau may need additional EMT staff as well, but that decision will require better information on current response times and an assessment of future needs," Weitzman said.

In Nassau, most emergency calls for ambulances - more than 60 percent of total emergency ambulance calls routed through the county's Police and Fire Emergency Reporting System (county 911 and FireCom) are handled by the county police. The numbers do not take into account additional direct responses by volunteer services, which are not included in currently available figures on ambulance responses in Nassau.

"That's another problem we found," Weitzman said. "The system is so confusing and fragmented that nobody is even sure what the total number of ambulance responses in the county is."

"Even with that uncertainty, all indications are that Nassau County ambulances will respond to an increasing number of emergency calls every year as the county's volunteer fire departments are less able to meet the demand," Weitzman said.

The trend of increasing reliance on county ambulances is growing, the comptroller said, for several reasons: Long Island's aging population; fire department ambulance calls far outnumber fire calls; and many volunteer fire departments report shortages of EMT volunteers, with many having to hire paid personnel to fill the need.

Responding to the comproller's audit, the Nassau County Police Department stated, "The Nassau County Police Emergency Ambulance Bureau is one of the finest municipal ambulance services that exists in the country. Our AMT staff saves countless lives throughout the year ... The Nassau County Police Department employs an integrated response wherein an officer responds first, provides assistance and advises medical technicians of the situation while they are on their way to the scene."

The police department also stated that the average police unit response time is less than two minutes and that the average ambulance response time is six minutes as of January 2006. "We do have the ability to record data and to calculate response time," the police department stated. "Calculations are configured utilizing computer spreadsheets. We are currently undergoing a major overhaul of our communications bureau and computer aided dispatch, which will provide more detailed and timely response time data."

Although the police department, in response to the audit findings, said it is working to improve its data collection and analysis system, the comptroller said, "I would like to see a greater sense of urgency."