After early pandemic dip, Hamilton paramedic calls spike

Off-load delays and ambulance shortages resurgent challenge, EMS chief says

Hamilton paramedics had a lull in hospital runs in the early days of COVID-19.

But calls are up again, leading to ambulance off-load delays at hospitals already hard hit by the resurgent pandemic.

Take Friday. Around 11 a.m., 25 ambulances, each carrying two paramedics, were on the road.

But of those ambulances, there were only eight available to respond to emergencies across the entire city, said EMS Chief Mike Sanderson — which is less than ideal.

“All the rest are on calls,” he added.

In the first two months of the pandemic last year, the average ambulance call volume per day was 194.

“But it didn’t last,” Paul Johnson, general manager of healthy and safe communities, told councillors during a budget presentation Thursday.

“By May 22, our call volume went up,” he said, noting an increase in daily calls for service of nearly 30 for the balance of 2020.

Hamilton EMS has pitched a seven per cent budget hike for 2021, which includes $700,000 to put an additional staffed ambulance on the road. That’s half of the cost. The province will pick up the balance of the 2021 expenditure next year, a funding “lag” that continues to irk city officials.

The EMS expenditure is part of the proposed healthy and safe communities department spending plan, which calls for a 3.7 per cent increase, or $9.3 million more, on a $257-million levy budget.

Some councillors hope to reduce a preliminary overall city operating budget hike of 2.5 per cent before talks are scheduled to wrap up at the end of March.

During Thursday’s budget session, Coun. Lloyd Ferguson noted pressure from the community to keep taxes low with many out of work due to the pandemic.

“It seems like every year, it’s never enough. You keep coming back,” Ferguson said, asking whether 2021 is “really the right year” for a seven per cent EMS hike.

Sanderson noted council has approved one additional ambulance per year since he came on board in 2013. The province also covered an eighth ambulance for a neonatal initiative.

“We’ve been continuing to add ambulances to catch up (with) what was really a gap that had occurred back in 2008.”

Sanderson added there has been a rise in call demand of four per cent in each of the last several years.

In 2019, there were 80 “code zero” situations, a term that refers to when no ambulances are free to respond to calls because all are busy. Last year, there were 27 code zeros, 15 of which occurred in January and February, before the pandemic took hold in earnest.

But that low trend has started to reverse itself, Sanderson told councillors. “We’ve already had three this month so far.”

In an interview, he said it’s hard to know what’s driving calls after the initial dip. But through anecdotal clues from staff and data, Sanderson suggested “part of the answer” could be “drive-by” dispatches: people calling 911 for someone they believe needs help. Last year, there were 4,724 calls of that nature, up from about 3,375 in 2019.

As well, Sanderson added, paramedics have responded to more calls for older adults at home. “There’s more people that are unable to get out and around. There’s more people that are unable to go visit.”

Last year, paramedics had 9,099 calls involving potential COVID-19 patients, Johnson said Thursday, and administered 9,504 COVID-19 tests. Paramedics will also help with the vaccination effort, he noted.