Inspection Detail

Inspection: 1472324.015 - Trinity Health

Inspection Information - Office: Osha Philadelphia Area Office

Investigation Summary

An employee was working as an emergency medical technician (EMT) or a paramedic. The narrative was not clear on his level of training. His employer was a suburban community hospital that provided emergency medical services to fire departments throughout the county in which it was located and other nearby areas. The individual fire departments, in an effort to reduce budgets, had contracted out emergency medical services to the community hospital. The hospital provided each fire department under contract with a guaranteed number of beds and an in-house ambulance and EMTs who were paid by the hospital. The crews were stationed at the independent fire stations and were dispatched through the county dispatch and communication center. Between calls and runs to the hospital, the fire crews were working both on the ambulances and in the fire stations. Each fire station had its own set of rules and policies regarding PPE and especially face masks. This discrepancy caused some inconsistencies between differing crews operating out of different fire stations. To wit, different townships required different levels of PPE to be worn while inside township property. For instance, one township required the use of face coverings and the disinfection of shared workspaces, while another township's fire department did not. The employee worked on an active ambulance that was dispatched on a variety of calls. One of his coworkers on the ambulance was an asymptomatic carrier of COVID-19. The two of them together worked approximately nine respiratory distress calls that could have been COVID-19-related. The employee contracted COVID-19 from one or more of these multiple sources. He began feeling ill on April 1, 2020. He self-isolated until April 9, 2020. On that day, he took himself to the hospital. He was immediately placed in the intensive care unit (ICU). He died at 8:00 p.m. on April 12, 2020. This was an OSHA-covered fatality.

Keywords: Infectious Disease