Call 911 in Denver, and the response time will lag behind many other cities’ systems, according to a new city audit.
“People expect medical emergencies are responded to fast and efficiently,” said Auditor Tim O’Brien, in a statement. “Every second matters. Because first responders are falling short of nationally agreed-upon response time goals, they are letting down the people of Denver who need emergency or life-saving medical assistance in critical moments.”
The National Emergency Number Association and the National Fire Protection Association provide standards for emergency response times. The city auditor studied the year from March 2023 to March 2024 and found the city lagged behind those goals.
In those months, Denver 911 received 500,279 emergency calls. Of those:
- 71 percent were answered within 15 seconds. The national standard is 90 percent.
- 73 percent were answered within 20 seconds. The national standard is 95 percent.
- About 6 percent of calls were not answered within two minutes.
But the city did see some improvement in answer times as 911 staffing levels increased during that period.
Denver is not the only city to miss these metrics. In Colorado Springs, only 55 percent of callers have gotten an answer within 15 seconds, KRDO reported, falling short of both Denver’s performance and the national standard.
In Oakland, Calif., 911 performance is very close to Denver’s — an improvement resulting from new IT investments and staffing. Minneapolis was better than Denver, answering 96 percent of calls within 15 seconds, but still fell short of the national standard.
Both Denver Fire and Denver Health missed their own response-time goals.
Denver Fire aims to show up to a scene within six minutes and thirty seconds. Instead, it averaged ten minutes and seven seconds.
Denver Health aims to show up within ten minutes and thirty seconds. Instead, it averaged fourteen minutes and six seconds.
Denver services don’t track one common data point: How much time passes from a unit’s arrival on the scene until they start treating the patient? That information is tracked by national groups, but Denver’s Department of Safety argues it’s not a “meaningful data point,” according to O’Brien.
Why not? Multiple variables, from the height of a building and how easy it is to enter to apartments with broken elevators to police navigating dangerous events, could skew the numbers, according to DPS.
“Without collecting this information, Public Safety cannot address potential inefficiencies in response times leading to improved patient safety,” O’Brien said. “We stress they should align themselves with industry standards.”
The Department of Public Safety argued its practices are in alignment with national standards and said collecting this material would be too cumbersome and imprecise, with too many departments involved.
Unlike other cities, Denver does not track how bad weather, construction and traffic influence response times.
Doing so, the auditor argued, might help explain why response times are so slow.
“The public will have better confidence in medical providers if they feel response times are adequate,” said O’Brien. “If the current goals are unrealistic, Public Safety should adjust them by taking external factors into account.”
