Last week the provincial government unveiled a new plan it hoped would help reduce ambulance response times, including the use of private ambulance services for interfacility transfers in the Calgary and Edmonton metro areas, $2 million additional funding for air ambulance transport, and a $35 million capital plan to help with EMS fleet replacement.
Local critics have said Airdrie has had some of the worse response times for ambulance service for years, and the statistics released publicly show this to be true.
The goal for ambulance response times in Airdrie is 12 minutes for 90 per cent of the most serious 9-1-1 calls, something that is currently not being met, according to a presentation by Alberta Health Services (AHS) to Airdrie city council on Nov. 20 of last year.
After the recent announcement, local critics zeroed in on the province's plan to use private ambulance services in Calgary for non-urgent transport as a means to free up on call ambulances up for emergencies, and therefore reduce response times.
“It will technically contribute the way a leaky faucet will contribute to filling your bathtub,” said Ryan Middleton, a paramedic and industry expert associated with the Airdrie EMS Citizens Action Committee.
Middleton said that the exceptions for both the Calgary and Edmonton contracts won’t really free up any emergency response time. According to Middleton, the amount of transfers and low-acuity calls being moved from Alberta EMS to either Guardian Ambulance or Associated Ambulance will be negligible.
“The limitations that are currently in place for the Edmonton zone contracts, it says they'll be handling the low acuity only within 50 km, nothing requiring advanced life support and so on,” Middleton said. “All these asterisks, all these caveats, add up to less than 12 to 15 per cent of all the transfers in the province, let alone the ones that are just in Calgary and Edmonton zones.”
One of the caveat’s to the program that Middleton described is a 50 kilometre radius that the contracted ambulances can respond to. Non-urgent calls in Airdrie, Okotoks, Cochrane, and other places close to Calgary will be serviced by Guardian Ambulance, but Middleton questions whether that will really free up EMS to respond to emergencies.
With this announcement, Middleton suspects that this is the provincial government's “narrow end of the wedge” in their plan to privatize Alberta Health Services.
“This is the narrow end of the wedge as far as the emergency medical services angle is concerned,” admitted Middleton. “I guess the alternative is, do I want them to privatize the entire transfer system so a 911 ambulance never does a transfer ever again unless it's an immediate, life threatening, critical reason? I'm not sure.”
The ambulance fleet replacement funding will support the replacement of EMS vehicles that have reached the end of their life-cycle, and will go towards buying new replacements. But the issue EMS staffing is not being addressed, and Middleton says that’s the real issue facing Alberta EMS.
