By Sheldon Spackman

Continued Advocacy Efforts

Council discusses additional tactics in fight for local ambulance dispatch

Jun 16, 2021 | 4:29 PM

Council received an update Tuesday regarding The City of Red Deer’s continued advocacy efforts to have its integrated ambulance dispatch service reinstated.

Since July 2020, The City of Red Deer along with the City of Lethbridge, City of Calgary and the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo have lobbied against a decision by Alberta Health Services to consolidate their regional ambulance dispatch services into the AHS system.

However, even with these efforts, on January 12 all four local dispatch services were consolidated.

The City of Red Deer has offered to cover the cost of ambulance dispatch. There was also an extensive public relations and social media campaign that included letters to media, website development requesting stories from residents, and online and print advertisements.

In January, Mayor Tara Veer wrote Health Minister Tyler Shandro requesting specific measures that could be taken to mitigate the impact of ambulance dispatch consolidation. Shandro then ordered an operational working group be formed to hear and discuss issues regarding dispatch consolidation.

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The Alberta Emergency Dispatch Integrated Working Group (AEDIWG) was launched on March 19 and includes representatives from Alberta Health (AH), Alberta Health Services (AHS), and a representative from the City of Red Deer, City of Calgary, City of Lethbridge, and Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo. Red Deer Fire Chief Ken McMullen is participating on this committee.

McMullen says some operational issues have come to light since consolidation.

“We’re seeing addressing errors in the new system. We are seeing delays in dispatching for the medical first response, so again in our community, that is an advanced life support fire truck getting dispatched to a scene,” he explains. “We are seeing some deviation from protocol and in specifics, there are times where our crews are not getting the critical information as it comes to safety alerts on a call that we’re about to attend.

“What we don’t always know at the end of the day is what the outcome was to the patients.”

The working group has met weekly with a collective approach to put forward a recommendations report to Shandro that is anticipated to support an action plan with a focus on the improvement of EMS dispatching services.

The information is said to focus on a number of issues including, but not limited to:

• Access to real time data regarding ambulance locations and activities
• Process for sharing ambulance statistics with municipality partners;
• Municipal 911 dispatch center ability to listen in on EMS dispatch calls, and;
• Process for sharing timely and accurate mapping data between dispatch centers.

City officials say additional tactics that can be used to enhance its advocacy efforts include calling for an independent review of the consolidation decision, asking for AHS Board of Directors technical briefings, having the Health Quality Council of Alberta request a review of dispatch consolidation from a patient safety perspective, continue to have Albertans share their recent experiences with AHS dispatch, and have affected communities share information and technical briefings.

“The municipalities are still at the table having conversations with the government, with the Alberta Working Group, and although we haven’t made great strides, we’re still making some progress which is the reason for municipalities to continue to have a seat at that table,” says McMullen.

He encourages members of the public to pay attention to social media campaigns from the City of Red Deer as well as the other affected communities, requesting feedback from personal impacts experienced through an ambulance call over the last six months.

“Your stories as patients tell a much clearer story than what we are getting as the chiefs of the municipalities.”