Councilors, union and EMS officials press for upgrade to Boston EMS dispatch phone and CMED systems

John Fitzgerald, district 3 city councilor and chair of the Boston City Council Committee on Public Health, Homelessness and Recovery, convened a July 31, 2025 hearing on docket number 1372 to review plans and timelines for modernizing Boston EMS’s dispatch phone system and related communications infrastructure.

The hearing drew testimony from Boston EMS leadership and representatives of the Boston EMS union. Jason Yekins, a Boston paramedic and president of the BBPA EMS division, told the committee that dispatch personnel are certified EMTs who provide clinical guidance over the phone and are operating on a patchwork system that can drop or misroute calls. "When 9 1 1 calls are dropped, misrouted, delayed because of system failures, it puts lives at risk," Yekins said. "The difference between properly routed calls and the ones mishandled can be the difference between life and death." Councilor Aaron Murphy framed the issue as broader than equipment: "This hearing is not just about modernizing a phone system. It's about ensuring that every Bostonian ... receives timely, high quality emergency care when they call 911. It's about equity, safety, and respect for the professionals who answer that call."

Why this matters: witnesses and elected officials said technology problems combine with staffing and pay disparities to strain Boston’s emergency medical response. The union said EMS dispatch staff work clinical calls on older analog and improperly installed equipment while police and fire use more modern systems; the union also said pay disparities of about $25,000 a year compared with other dispatch workers undercut morale and retention. Councilors described firsthand examples, including a family report of a 13-minute dispatch delay and another 10 minutes for ambulance arrival on a July call, and they pressed for departmental data to assess how often response targets are missed.

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