Local paramedic union calls on province to track offload delay times
Posted Jul 20, 2023 04:14:22 PM.
Last Updated Jul 21, 2023 02:12:26 PM.
Last fall, CUPE 5191, the paramedics union for the Waterloo region, declared a slew of code reds, due to there being multiple occasions of no ambulances available to respond to emergency calls.
Dave Bryant, co-vice president of the local union, stated that there are days when hospital staff are able manage the increased call volume, but the number of code reds have continued to ‘trend worse’ since the end of lockdowns.
According to Bryant, a potential solution to the increased pressures on paramedics could be for the province to collect data on how much time paramedics spend waiting to transfer patients from emergency rooms to hospital rooms.
“The importance of that data helps us identify the problem areas. Peak times, peak volumes, which hospitals are getting more patients,” Bryant explained. “There’s so many different factors that can come from that hard data that would help us find solutions.”
A spokesperson for Ontario’s Health Minister Sylvia Jones told ‘The Canadian Press’ that the province does not track offload delay data because municipalities are responsible for ambulance deployment strategies.
Bryant remarked that the obligation to track offload delay data should be on the province due to there only being a handful of cities, such as Ottawa, Toronto and London, who are in charge of keeping track of their own dispatching services.
“The rest of the dispatching for the province is under the Ministry of Health. It is 100 per cent operated by the province,” Bryant remarked. “So they would have the best access and ability to track things like code reds, code yellows, code blacks.”
Bryant explained that the lack of ambulances available for emergency calls due to offload delays has increased dramatically, which has led to CUPE 5191 recently starting to track offload delay times.
“The problem is it’s kind of on a volunteer basis,” Bryant remarked. “Whether or not people want to submit that information confidentially, regarding missed lunches, and offload delays leading to mandatory overtime for the paramedics as well.”
Bryant added the the increase of offload delays was trending upwards before the pandemic, but COVID-19 sped up the inevitable.
