Tiered medical response plan Adopted for firefighters

A new protocol should significantly reduce the number of emergency medical calls municipal fire services respond to, and the costs to those municipalities, but at least one mayor is cautiously optimistic. Amherstburg Mayor Aldo DiCarlo is taking a wait-and-see approach to an amended EssexWindsor Emergency Medical Services and Fire Services Medical Tiered Response agreement approved Thursday by county council.

The protocol changes rules on when fire services will respond to medical emergencies. Bruce Krauter, chief of EssexWindsor Emergency Medical Services, said the Medical Tiered Response Agreement formalized in 2015 would automatically dispatch fire departments if an ambulance was coming from a distance. “We found that a lot of those calls, they were not emergency, life (threatening),” Krauter said. Krauter said historical call data showed emergency call responses resulted in “life or limb” patient transports only 2.3 per cent of the

time and fire chiefs reported that their services were being requested frequently but medical interventions were not needed as often. As well, there were concerns over the high number of calls to health care facilities, long-term care homes, doctor offices or other locations where medical personnel were already on the scene. “The volume (of calls in county municipalities) was just getting unmanageable for them,” he said. “It’s a big financial burden to the lower tier municipalities ( because most are served by volunteers).” Windsor has a full-time fire service so it was not affected in the same manner.

The new agreement will limit when fire services are called out for a tiered medical response. Fire services will respond to a medical call of a threat to life or limb, otherwise known as a Code 4 — the highest emergency code, when EMS resources are depleted or almost depleted.

“Fire service response is not based on time or location but that of patient condition and EMS resources available,” Krauter said. “It is expected this clause will reduce the use of fire services for those calls where medical interventions provided are not required.”

“(The costs for tiered medical response calls) have gone up considerably year over year for the last four or five years,” DiCarlo said. Amherstburg was at the $60,000 to $70,000 mark in costs to its fire service, which DiCarlo called quite a substantial burden for any single department.

“At the very least, in the short term, we’ve taken steps and now we’ll see what happens,” he added.