Mayor worries about access to emergency services

The growing trend of using firefighters to respond to emergency medical calls when an ambulance crew is unavailable or too far away has led the Town of Amherstburg to question service levels and the equitable distribution of costs.

“We keep getting told it’s got to do with offloading delay issues and funding,” Mayor Aldo DiCarlo said. “The big question for us is … how is that affecting our ambulance service? Does it mean that we don’t have the ambulance service that we’re supposed to be having?”

DiCarlo said ambulances are stationed in Amherstburg because of the town’s volume of calls. There is one 24-hour crewed ambulance and one 10-hour vehicle stationed in Amherstburg.

The town agreed to the tiered response system, along with Windsor and the rest of the county’s municipalities except for Leamington.

“I think it’s got more to do with we feel kind of stuck,” DiCarlo said. “What do we do, not respond if an ambulance isn’t available?

“So if you have municipalities who are not involved in tiered response, are we sending Amherstburg ambulances their way while our fire department picks up the slack?”

But Bruce Krauter, chief of the Essex-Windsor Emergency Medical Services, said ambulances cover the entire county and are not specific to any municipality despite the presence of an EMS base.

“We’re a seamless system.” Krauter said. “So we can cross municipal borders. We actually cross boundaries between counties ... we respond to Wheatley regularly (in Chatham-Kent county).”

Krauter said call volumes are rising every year across the county.

“When I look at my projections from 2013 to 2016, call volumes are going up at a rate of two to three per cent (annually),” he said. “The last enhancement to the EMS budget was in 2009.

“We’re at a point now where we really have to look at enhancing our services and our resources.”

But the cost of sending firefighters out as first responders has also been rising annually.

Fire Chief Bruce Montone said Amherstburg spent $61,000 of its $262,558 total budget for salaries on medical assist calls in 2016. The figure doesn’t include additional equipment or vehicle costs.

There were 107 medical calls last year.

“Our medical calls have been increasing incrementally each year (and) ... therefore one can assume our costs are increasing,” Montone said. “This isn’t new. What’s new is the frequency is changing.”

All of the town’s firefighters are trained in first aid. The service has both full-time and volunteer members working out of three stations.

DiCarlo said sending out the fire department as first responders “seems to be the norm and the province, I believe, is trying to make it the norm.

“If somebody’s responding to you, don’t you want a paramedic if you need a paramedic?”

He said even though municipalities can agree to redistribute costs for ambulance service, the fire department calls are a “flat out added cost” to the town.

Amherstburg officials are looking for information on cost breakdowns, how the town is paying for ambulance service and if the town is paying more to cover municipalities that have higher volumes of calls.

Krauter said funding is complicated because it is based on a 50-50 split with the province but the numbers are always a year behind. It actually works out to be about 48 per cent funding from the province and 52 per cent from the tax levy.

As well, off-load delays are an ongoing pressure on the system. Krauter said Windsor Regional Hospital has been working to alleviate those tie-ups in emergency departments. The numbers in Windsor have evened off but Leamington District Memorial Hospital’s off-load delays have been increasing.

Krauter expects to have a report outlining the funding issues, as well as the need for more ambulances and paramedics, to present to county council at the July meeting.

Our medical calls have been increasing incrementally each year (and) ... therefore one can assume our costs are increasing.