MLA has fix for rural ambulance woes
Pat Stier has identified key issues
Many problems associated with rural ambulance service in Alberta could be fixed with a few simple changes, says a southern Alberta MLA who has been speaking out on the issue for years.
During Question Period at the Alberta Legislature last Wednesday, UCP MLA for Livingstone-Macleod Pat Stier pressed Health Minister Sarah Hoffman in regards to ongoing rural ambulance coverage.
He identified several key issues he feels the government needs to address.
“Enormous delays for paramedics in emergency departments is number one,” he said. “Plus non-emergency transfers, flexing of units into large cities and faulty centralized dispatch all must be remedied immediately.”
Hoffman replied the government has plans to increase EMS funding by $23 million, which is headed for front-line services.
“AHS is developing their plan — should our budget be approved — and then we will be able to share that publicly,” she said.
Stier said rural units need to be released within an hour of arrival at emergency rooms, and they should be returned to their home communities directly rather than be flexed out to other areas — which could cause gaps in local coverage.
Hoffman said hard and fast rules on ambulance placement and usage may not be the answer, however, citing the Humboldt Broncos tragedy in Saskatchewan as an example of ambulances operating out of their area.
“I know no first responder who, when they got called to go to that terrible accident that was happening in Saskatchewan, would want to go back to their community instead of going and running to the call to help those young men who were dying on the side of the road,” she said.
“That’s a very poor example,” Stier said on Wednesday. He explained in most cases, ambulances are moved into the city from a rural location and then are sent out to different communities from there. And if there is an emergency in the community the ambulance originated from, it is left to an ambulance from another area to come in and deal with it.
Stier recently received word an ambulance from Vulcan was sent to cover a heart attack call on Crowchild Trail in Calgary.
“Can you imagine how sensible that is?” he asked. “It’s absolutely ridiculous.”
Stier said rural EMS units and paramedics continue to have their time wasted on “taxi-style” non-emergency transfers, doctors’ appointments, and transport duties were assigned to them.
“The obvious solution to that problem is to return to an auxiliary transport system for that need,” he said.
He praised the efforts of communities in the AHS South Zone whose fundraising efforts have allowed for the purchase of non-ambulance transfer vehicles as an option for keeping ambulances in their areas.
There are six of these vehicles in use in the AHS South Zone, and Stier said it is something that could be looked at on a larger scale to cut down on non-essential ambulance use.
“One report came in that some ambulances were taking time off their hands to escort people to eye examinations,” said Stier. “In other cases, some were being used for appointments for insoles. This is absolutely ridiculous.
“In the meantime, in rural areas, if (those ambulances) have gone to get some insoles, they aren’t doing what they are supposed to be doing. And highcalibre people are wasting their time.”
“All they have to do is use a different system for people entering the emergency room,” he added. “It’s a logistical problem only. It’s a bottleneck that has to be fixed.”
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