Ambulances: What Now?
Posted Mar 9, 2011 04:33:35 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The Region’s ambulance service is in a crisis, and the EMS director and Regional councillors are wondering how to get it out of that crisis.
Director, John Prno told a council committee yesterday an ambulance delay and shortage crisis that started last July saw its worst month ever in February this year.
There were 32 instances of no local ambulance being available for a call, with 522 instances of offload delays, where ambulances wasted 36 days worth of time waiting to transfer a patient inside a hospital.
Prno says EMS is asking for Council for one new ambulance and four paramedics, but he says even eight ambulances wouldn’t be a permanent solution.
He explains, there’s no telling when the local hospitals will overcrowd and when you’d need the extra ambulances and staff standing by.
At the Community Services Committee meeting at Regional Council Chambers yesterday, Councilor Geoff Lorenz wondered if a whole new hospital would help.
Prno answered, more hospital capacity would help, but he knew of occasions where one new hospital replaced two old ones and there was actually less overall bed space in the new one.
Councilor Tom Galloway said the situation is untenable, and wondered if abuses of hospitals and ambulances could be eliminated, like people who use ambulances like a taxi.
Prno says yes, there are “frequent flyers” who use ambulances more than 12 times per year — including one individual who made 171 ambulance trips last year — and they are checking to see if all these trips are legitimate, or could their healthcare needs be handled differently.
But he says those frequent flyers only total about twenty people.
Councilor Brenda Halloran wondered if an ambulance crew could stay with a patient while the vehicle itself went to another call with a different crew.
Prno says they’re working on such a plan, but there’s the problem of having two stretchers and two sets of monitors available for each ambulance, plus staffing concerns.
Halloran also said the mayors and politicians of the Region should champion the cause to remedy the ambulance crisis.
Prno and Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Liana Nolan, both told Council all the hospitals and healthcare stakeholders are already working together, along with the local MPP’s, to resolve this issue.
