Report: LA dispatcher possibly mishandled call in baby's death

LOS ANGELES - Juana Caracia's 2-month-old son was dying. But when her husband called 911, the dispatcher sent only two paramedics - which meant Caracia had to hold an oxygen mask over her baby's mouth herself in the ambulance.

The infant died shortly after arriving at Valley Presbyterian Hospital in Van Nuys.

After a preliminary review of the case, the Los Angeles Fire Department's quality assurance unit has found that the dispatcher ''most likely'' should have sent more backup, the Los Angeles Times reported in Sunday's editions.

''It's unfair, I think, to ask somebody to do something on their own child or family member that they are not trained to do,'' said paramedic Jason Haney, who has been assigned to investigate the Sept. 19 incident.

The infant, Adrian Becerra, was born in July with a heart defect. His death was apparently of natural causes, a coroner's spokesman told the Times.

The disclosure about the handling of the call is the latest in a series of reports about breakdowns in the city's emergency response system.

In July, an internal study found four ''grossly inappropriate'' dispatches in fatal cases. The report also estimated that during a 60-day period earlier this year, 160 people may have been sent the wrong level of medical care.

A City Council committee has scheduled a hearing for Monday on the problems.

Fire Chief William R. Bamattre has maintained that dispatch breakdowns are rare in a system that handles more than 275,000 emergency medical calls a year.

But the July report suggested dispatchers often fail to obtain key information from callers about the severity of their problems, the Times said.

According to the report, these lapses may be partly the result of dispatchers forming ''negative impressions'' about callers, doubting what is reported, imposing their own ''preconceived notions'' about medical emergencies or coming up with snap assessments, called ''dispatcher diagnosis.''

The chief question under review by the Fire Department in Adrian's case is why the veteran dispatcher classified the call as being about a ''sick person'' rather than a full-blown emergency.

This judgment was made after the father, Juan Becerra, told the dispatcher that the baby was cold, pale, unresponsive, having trouble breathing and had undergone heart surgery, according to a transcript of the call.

The Times asked three veteran Los Angeles paramedics to review the transcript, and all agreed that there were enough red flags for the dispatcher to send two paramedics and four backup firefighters - the maximum response.

Fire officials declined to identify the dispatcher but described him as a good employee with no previous record of problems.

Caracia believes that Adrian might still be alive if the paramedics had not arrived alone.

''If they could have come with more people,'' she said, ''they could have done something.''