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Fire and EMS chiefs flag overdose-data discrepancies, propose shared data warehouse
Summary
Spokane Fire Department reported a recent downward trend in dispatches and noted that overdose and deceased counts can vary between fire, police and the medical examiner. Fire leaders said they are building a data warehouse to reconcile CAD, EMS and ME records and improve overdue toxicology reporting.
The Spokane Fire Department told the council that overdose-related counts and 'deceased' tallies do not yet align across agency data systems, and that toxicology and medical-examiner findings lag behind dispatch and EMS records.
Chief Williams said the department’s reporting lags by about a month because incident records must be closed and locked before final counts are published. "We tend to report — our data will lag a month," he said, noting that final toxicology results can take weeks and that the jurisdiction is working to reconcile records with the medical examiner and police.
Officials described plans to build a shared data warehouse that will combine CAD, fire and police incident records and medical-examiner reports to avoid double-counting and enable more consistent overdose tracking across agencies. Fire staff also said last-year naloxone distribution efforts and the state's "leave-behind" supply helped get doses into the downtown community, but that reporting on usage still trails distribution.
What’s next: City staff said they will coordinate with the mayor’s office and the medical examiner to better align counts and will report back as the new data warehouse matures.
