Alberta Municipalities are calling for an independent audit of Alberta Health Services emergency dispatch and seek solutions from a provincial level to concerning ambulance delivery times.
The governing body, formerly known as the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association (AUMA), met in Edmonton last week and passed two related resolutions with overwhelming support.
Along with Airdrie, Chestermere, Strathmore and Turner Valley, the Town of Okotoks sponsored an emergent resolution that lobbied AUMA to urge the province “to develop a plan to make urgently needed improvements to the delivery and performance of the ambulance system where municipalities are recognized and compensated for the role they play in support of the provincial health care system,” convention documents read.
“When the province transitioned ambulance service from municipal responsibility to provincial responsibility some time ago, there was a commitment that there would be no degradation in the capacity of these services,” said Turner Valley Coun. Jonathan Gordon during his presentation to members on Nov. 18.
Unfortunately, he said, that wasn't the case.
"First and foremost, there’s been an increasing need for fire services to be the first response and the first to arrive on the scene. Also, there’s been an increasing need for co-response, when our EMS are more than 10 minutes out.
"On top of that, municipal fire crews are tied up in incidents longer, and are now required to stay until they can pass the patient to someone with at least the same level of qualification or even higher, which means now our fire crews are tied up on scene and they cannot leave until EMS arrives.”
He said this is problem is magnified with the number of concurrent calls, which ultimately lowers response times, delays fire response and overall, presents a significant challenge to municipal employees.
Okotoks Mayor Tanya Thorn echoed his concern in an interview following the convention, and said the number of calls where fire services arrive ahead of EMS services is increasing significantly, especially in Okotoks.
She said in past months, there were three incidents where fire crews were tied up for 40 minutes waiting for an ambulance to arrive.
“So, municipalities are starting to say — and want the province to start acknowledging — that we are funding a piece of provincial health responsibility,” she said. “Either A) what’s the compensation for us to do that or B) what are the changes and mechanisms we can put in place to get us back down to an acceptable level of time that we are tied up in a call.”
These problems stem from several issues, Thorn said, such as ambulance fleets falling behind a growing population and increased transports and calls pulling units into Calgary.
"Once they're lost to the Calgary vortex, we lose them, and so that just compounds the problem further," Thorn said. "So, my Okotoks ambulances have gone in to Calgary, so therefore Claresholm ambulances are coming to a call [in Okotoks], and Claresholm has a call so now they're getting one from Vulcan, and we just keep perpetuating the problem."
"There's got to be a better mechanism for us to solve that."
The resolution was amended to include consultations with the Health Sciences Association of Alberta (HSAA) as well as municipalities when advocating to government.
Eligible Alberta Municipalities members voted in favour of the motion – 461 votes (95.64 per cent) to 21 votes (4.36 per cent).
In a press release following the endorsement, HSAA president Mike Parker expressed his satisfaction with the decision to move forward in advocating for improved service.
"As we have seen throughout this pandemic, municipalities are providing leadership where the UCP government has failed to act. On behalf of our members, we applaud the AUMA for taking the initiative to address another crisis of health care," he said. "HSAA members are the paramedics that respond when people call for help. We are the experts and we are eager to partner with AUMA to fix this problem."
While not sponsored by Okotoks or neighbouring municipalities, another resolution to address concerns surrounding emergency medical services was passed during the convention.
Members voted for the association to advocate to the Government of Alberta and health minister to initiate an independent, third-party review of the Alberta Health Services emergency ambulance dispatch system and to formally look into the increase in response times and technical outages that have frequently occurred since Jan. 12, 2021.
“I think that an independent review of what is truly, actually happening on the ground is needed, so that we can have complete information and that allows us then, in my opinion, to actually come forward with potential solutions to solve that problem,” Thorn said.
