(rdnewsNOW)

By Sheldon Spackman

Calling For Reversal

City council asks health minister to keep ambulance dispatch local

Oct 13, 2020 | 6:49 PM

City council is reaffirming Red Deer’s urgent request to Alberta’s health minister to halt plans to consolidate ambulance dispatch in the province.

On Tuesday, council voted unanimously to send another letter to Tyler Shandro, the premier, and all Alberta MLAs to reiterate their stance that the proposed consolidation will negatively impact emergency dispatch services delivery to not only Red Deerians, but all Albertans.

The cities of Red Deer, Calgary, Lethbridge, and the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo maintain satellite integrated EMS dispatch centres where both fire and ambulance are notified simultaneously to provide a faster response of resources. In Red Deer, response times are said to be 18-21 seconds faster.

However, for the fifth time in seven years AHS is once again proposing to consolidate EMS dispatch services to three provincial communications centers in Peace River, Edmonton and Calgary to reduce costs by more than $5 million.

City officials say the consolidation decision announced by AHS on Aug. 4 was made without consulting the four affected municipalities.

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Previous health ministers all overturned the decision once the regional and provincial-wide impact had been understood.

It is further felt the proposal will lead to delays in services to patients in emergencies and result in fewer Advanced Life Support fire vehicles being sent to provide patient care before an ambulance would arrive.

The current integrated approach to Emergency Services means that individuals are cross-trained in both firefighting and emergency medical services response, which is said to provide a seamless response to any emergency by any and every member.

The integrated model allows fire and EMS communications operators to be in the same room and collaborate in real-time. When dispatchers learn a critical piece of information, the other dispatcher is immediately made aware through verbal communication. The real-time communication allows fire and EMS crews to be notified simultaneously and provide a faster response of both fire and EMS resources.

City officials says the dispatch consolidation will result in delays as calls will be transferred to an AHS call centre to dispatch an ambulance, and local fire vehicles may not be sent when they are closer than an ambulance.

Under a consolidated model, instead of simultaneous communications, dispatch will need to transfer callers without “heads-up” notification. It’s anticipated the transfer could then lead to dropped calls and patients needing to repeat critical information. Additionally, AHS dispatchers will not have local knowledge of geography, landmarks, linguistic terminology, and fire units that may not be dispatched when they should be – impacting patient outcomes.

The transition to the consolidated model, effective Jan. 4, 2021, is already underway, Fire Chief Ken McMullen told council.

“We have had two transition meetings and they’re currently scheduled for every two weeks,” said McMullen. “Things are happening, there are meetings and they’ve started to go down that path.”

Councillor Tanya Handley says the decision to consolidate doesn’t make sense.

“Periodically, as politicians, sometimes we see things on paper that may make sense, maybe make dollars and cents, but to me this does not make good common sense when seconds count the way that they do,” she said. “So I would just reaffirm that our citizens call to action. Call your MLAs, write letters, write emails, write directly to our health minister – the person that is the ultimate decision maker in this issue.”

“Mark my words, if the province moves forward with this proposed plan, they will come to regret it,” warned councillor Vesna Higham.

Mayor Tara Veer said this is a life and death decision.

“If the switch goes off on Jan. 4, immediately, dispatch will be delayed for Red Deerians and central Albertans by a minimum of 20 seconds. For AHS to say that it will not affect people, that is a misleading statement and they need to be held accountable for the misinformation that they have shared to Albertans,” she stressed.

“The simple expectation that we have of our health minister to once again for the fifth time is to not only overturn AHS on this short-sighted decision, but to call for a cessation to this ill-advised plan once and for all, and to let common sense prevail in life and death emergency situations and to stop playing an unnecessary roulette with the lives of all Albertans.”

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