Off-load delays remain issue for paramedics
Councillor calls it ‘ridiculous’ the Region on track to lose a year of ambulance time
WATERLOO REGION — Lost ambulance time due to lengthy offload delays was again an issue frustrating regional councillors on Tuesday.
Waterloo Region is on track to losing a full year of ambulance time to delays in off-loading patients at the emergency department.
“Losing a year of an ambulance to off-load delays just seems ridiculous,” Coun. Sandy Shantz said. “Intuitively it seems like it should be simple, but apparently it’s not.”
An average of 22.3 ambulance days each month is now lost to off-load delays, up from an average of 14.2 days at the same time last year, according to a performance report presented to a regional committee.
“We continue to see an increase in the off-load delays,” said chief of paramedic services Stephen Van Valkenburg.
While response times were 10 seconds faster from January to August this year compared to the same time last year, off-load delays and unit utilization rates continue to be problem areas.
Unit utilization is when ambulances are out on calls. When that is higher than the target rate of 35 per cent, it’s difficult to ensure an ambulance will be available for the next call in a reasonable time.
Unit utilization is 39.4 per cent so far this year, essentially unchanged from the same period in 2017.
“It really has not moved a lot,” Van Valkenburg said.
The addition of two 12-hour ambulances in late February helped to reduce the impact of off-load delays and call volume growth, but only temporarily.
“We’re only keeping up with the increase to call volume,” Van Valkenburg said.
Calls for an ambulance continue to rise, beyond what was predicted in the paramedic service’s master plan.
There were 35,801 vehicle responses from January to August — a 3.1 per cent increase over the same period last year. The service is currently averaging more than 4,500 vehicle responses per month — an increase of 1,130 more responses each month or 38 a day.
That’s putting a strain on local hospitals.
“The volumes that we’re experiencing are just more than they can handle,” Van Valkenburg said.
Coun. Sean Strickland said the region had been making headway on off-load delays, but “now it is seemingly reversing itself.”
He asked if there are still dedicated off-load nurses in hospitals taking over patient care to allow paramedics to respond to other calls, or if more need to be added.
Van Valkenburg said off-load nurses are still working in emergency departments, but the bottleneck is the volume of patients and shortage of hospital beds.
“We get caught up in the vortex of the hospital’s problem,” Van Valkenburg said. “Our hands are somewhat tied.”
‘‘ The volumes that we’re experiencing are just more than they can handle.
STEPHEN VAN VALKENBURG Chief of paramedic services