Red Deer seeks fix for ambulance service strain
Red Deer not only needs expanded hospital infrastructure, our city is also short on ambulances.
In a bid to ease the pressure on Red Deer’s tapped out ambulance fleet, city officials are urging the province for the establishment of a non-ambulance service to handle non-emergency inter-facility patient transfers.
The idea is included in The City of Red Deer’s list of provincial advocacy items. The cities of Leduc and Lethbridge have also identified the issue.
City council heard at their meeting on Tuesday that Red Deer currently has five full-time ambulances, which is down from the nine our city had before the David Thompson Health Region was abolished and AHS took over provincial ambulance services in 2008.