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SFFD reports sustained ambulance offload delays, urges hospital summit; Sixth Street triage pilot expands outreach
Summary
Deputy Chief Simon Pang told the Fire Commission that ambulance patient offload times averaged about 50 minutes in February—well above the 30‑minute state benchmark—and urged a summit with hospital leaders. He also updated commissioners on the Sixth Street mobile triage pilot and neighborhood street‑crisis teams that the city plans to scale up.
Deputy Chief Simon Pang reported to the San Francisco Fire Commission on March 12 that ambulance patient offload times (APOT) remained well above the state benchmark and that a large share of the department’s staffing stress stems from hospital delays and a private BLS‑ambulance pilot in the city.
Pang said the department’s average APOT in February was about 50 minutes, compared with the state benchmark of 30 minutes. "In February our average time to transfer care to the hospital was about 50 minutes," he said, and added the department recorded “1,173 times our ambulances were delayed at least 45 minutes to an hour, 742 times up to 90 [minutes], 122 times up to 2 hours, and 69 times over 2 hours.” He told commissioners the department is organizing staff town halls to validate data and said he has proposed an APOT summit with hospital leadership to look for fixes.
Why it matters: long offload…
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