Alberta Health Services (AHS) might say St. Albert has a third ambulance available during peak hours, but city officials say if the ambulance is in town, it is seldom available when it's needed and the province won't provide any data to prove it even exists.
According to Minister of Health and Wellness Fred Horne, the province followed through on its promise in September to permanently station a third advanced life support (ALS) ambulance in St. Albert to provide additional peak-hour coverage, defined as 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. The ambulance is stationed at Sturgeon Community Hospital, Horne said, and its paramedics even work in the hospital's emergency room when the ambulance is not needed.
"There is a third ambulance stationed at the Sturgeon. It is there 365 days a year, 12 hours a day," Horne said.
But as far as Mayor Nolan Crouse, acting city manager Chris Jardine and Fire Services Chief Ray Richards are concerned, the unit does not exist because it is almost never available and the province will not provide the city with statistical data on how it is used.
"Since we can't get that data, our anecdotal evidence and our perception is that that third ambulance barely exists at all," Jardine said.
What the city wants to see is data on response times for the third ambulance and how often it is able to meet the standard of responding to calls within nine minutes, 90 per cent of the time, the former benchmark for St. Albert's integrated fire and ambulance service. AHS took over the responsibility for ambulances in Alberta in 2009.
Richards backed up Jardine's assertions, saying without data it is hard to know where the ambulance is.
"From the data we see, the [ambulance] is not here," Richards said.
The ambulance originates from Morinville, Richards said, and drives to the Sturgeon every day at 7 a.m. where it is supposed to be for 12 hours to respond to calls. But the Gazette has learned the unit is frequently called back to Morinville.
While all ambulances are dispatched from a central location, St. Albert still monitors the whereabouts of its EMS staff for safety reasons, Richards said. As a result, he is familiar with how frequently both of the city's ambulances, which operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, are busy. In those circumstances, the third ambulance should be called in, but the city is told by AHS that there are no ambulances available in the city.
"It's hard to imagine it's there when our two ambulances are out," Richards said. "It is our dispatchers who tell us when there is no ambulance in the city and that happens more often than not. Where is that peak ambulance then?
"From what we are seeing from calls, it's either as busy as we are because there are so many times there is no third ambulance, it's hard to believe it's here."
Pilot project
In late March 2011, in response to growing complaints about increasing response times in St. Albert, AHS announced a pilot project that would see a third ambulance available in the city during peak hours.
According to Richards, AHS would look at the resources available in the immediate area and send one ambulance to St. Albert for that period of time, typically from Morinville. The pilot lasted 90 days, after which AHS took 30 days to review the data. At the beginning of September, it announced a third ambulance would be permanently stationed in St. Albert to cover those peak hours.
Crouse said AHS is adamant there is a third ambulance here, but wonders why it isn't stationed at one of the fire halls with the other two units. He also wants to know where this ambulance is spending its time if it's never available.
"Maybe this is the issue — that they are not in St. Albert but they are out and about," Crouse said. "AHS, from their point of view, can say it begins its day in St. Albert."
As a result, in order to be convinced the third ambulance is here to serve the city, Crouse said he wants to see data for all three ambulances in terms of how many local residents they assist, as well as how many St. Albertans the ambulances help per unit, dating back to the period the pilot project began.
"I think the key question is, 'Show me the data,' " Crouse said.
