City getting two new ambulances to help with EMS response
By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on February 14, 2023.
Herald photo by Al Beeber
Two additional ambulances will soon be operating in Lethbridge 24 hours a day. The additional units are expected to be in service on May 1 and lower EMS response times here.LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com
Two additional ambulances will soon hit the road in Lethbridge to respond to emergencies 24 hours a day, 365 days a week.
Greg Adair, Chief of Lethbridge Fire and Emergency Services, said Monday that he expects the ambulances will be operational by May 1.
Their arrival, he said, will improve EMS response times here.
The ambulances, to be staffed through the creation of 10.8 new full-time positions, will provide Advanced Life Support, which is the highest level of care possible on an ambulance. Adair said the hope is to fill those positions as soon as possible.
The new ambulances are being made possible through net new funding of $304,954 from AHS.
Adair said eight ambulances are now operating at the peak throughout the day and the new ones will bring that number to 10.
The City has been working collaboratively with Alberta Health Services for several months, said Adair.
“We’ve been working the last number of months with Alberta Health Services to come up with a solution to help some of the EMS pressures we’re experiencing here in Lethbridge and certainly the surrounding areas,” said Adair.
“These additional resources, that we hope to have operational on May 1, will be able to continue to provide Advanced Life Support services to people who have emergency medical requirements and in their times of needs, we’ll be able to have additional ambulances respond to the calls,” added Adair.
Those additional ambulances will help “with some of those resource challenges we’re seeing within the current EMS system,” said the Chief.
He said response times currently are around the 10-minute mark but the extra ambulances will “certainly help reduce that. As well, it will make more availability for that next emergency where we’ll have more resources available to respond.”
AHS says in January EMS response times for the most urgent calls in communities with populations greater than 3,000 were 19 minutes, which was down from 21 in December of 2022.
It says EMS no longer automatically dispatches ambulances to non-injury collisions and AHS is fast-tracking ambulance transfers at emergency departments by moving less urgent patients to hospital waiting areas “while implementing use of a triage physician/EMS/RN in the waiting room to support ambulance off-load.”
Adair called the new ambulances “a wonderful initiative.”
Acting mayor Jenn Schmidt-Rempel said “the most important thing is this is going to reduce EMS times within our city. And the safety of our residents is always the most important thing to us. This improves that EMS time, this improves that service and it’s something that we’re certainly excited to see happening down here in Lethbridge.”
The acting mayor said the additional resources are needed in the city and “we certainly appreciate that AHS has worked collaboratively with our EMS teams to be able to get this service down here. It will alleviate some of those pressures that our EMS teams are seeing right now. It’s going to improve their morale as well as making sure that our residents here in the city of Lethbridge are getting the services they need.”
Schmidt-Rempel said “we do recognize that our EMS team and AHS worked really hard to come to the table to an agreement to get us these extra two ambulances to serve our area and that’s really what’s most important – that they were able to come together to come to an agreement to make sure our citizens were getting the services that they needed down here in Lethbridge.”
City council was actively involved on Team Lethbridge that travelled to Edmonton to meet with representatives of the province, she said, and put the initiative forward as a need for the city.
“We wrote letters and we were actively engaged with the ministers any opportunity we had to let them know that we did need these extra services down here,” Schmidt-Rempel said.
Suzanne Maynard, director of EMS Operations for the South Zone, said in a Monday Zoom meeting with media “we will see that there will be a decrease in our response times which we do know is one of our priorities. And we do hope that we will see a decrease in units from surrounding rural communities being pulled into Lethbridge to support the citizens of Lethbridge.”
She added the government has a number of priorities including additional resources for Lethbridge.
In a statement to media, mayor Blaine Hyggen – who was out of town Monday – said “this is great news for our community and the safety of our residents. We are very pleased to be working collaboratively with AHS on this delivery of essential services for Lethbridge.”
In the same statement, interim senior provincial director of EMS for AHS Murray Crawford stated “we are making fast, effective improvements to EMS services in Alberta. Adding these new ambulances will improve EMS response times, one of our four priorities at AHS and help Albertans get the timely and effective care and support they need.”
Minister of Health Jason Copping said in that statement “adding these life-saving resources to the community of Lethbridge is another example of how we are collaborating with our partners and communities to make our EMS system more responsive to the needs of Albertans.”
The province said it added 19 new ambulances last year with more than 20 coming this year which AHS says will create additional capacity help better respond to patients.
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This is good news, but I would estimate that 60% of the EMS dispatches are for suspected overdoses . . . in those cases most refuse further treatment and in many cases someone has administered Narcan or Naloxone prior to the arrival of EMS. Anyone who lives or works downtown has seen the high number of EMS responses to prove this point.
Do we need highly trained paramedics responding to these? Would not specially trained people who focus on the overdoses themselves be better? This type of training could be done in a 3 month course that would provide emergency driver training, equipment training, medical training for overdose emergency treatment, etc. First aid courses train people for CPR/AED already and they sould support the specially trained personnel who could respond in mini-vans and assess whether EMS is required, while administering emergency overdose first aid.
Anyone in the downtown knows how many times EMS responds to these and they are backed up with a fire unit which stresses both fire and EMS. I have witnessed multiple times overdoses where one of the addicts friends have administered Narcan or Naloxone and when EMS arrives, they get up and walk away, refusing treatment. Ideally, it is better to monitor someone who overdoses, in case the initial Narcan or Naloxone was not enough . . . often someone will walk away and when the Narcan or Naloxone wears off, overdoses again from the original use.
Many jurisdictions in Canada and the US are looking at involuntary treatment for both overdose patients and those with mental health issues on the streets and in some cases when you overdose, you are under an involuntary (mandatory) 48 hour medical watch where treatment is offered by treatment counselors.
My estimate of 60% of EMS is close I believe as an average, and it varies throughout the month . . . when the addicts/homeless get their checks mid-month or end of month, there are constant sirens downtown from EMS responding to suspected overdoses. In BC they called it Welfare Wednesday, because the checks were given out on Wednesdays.
We need to look at better ways to responding to these overdoses that most of the time take valuable resources away and stress the system in the region! I say region, because fire and EMS resources are shared throughout this area to support other communities. When they are short we help them and when we are short they help us.
Therefore, these responses stress the region, not just this city!