A father is raising the alarm about ambulance dispatch after his family waited about 19 minutes for emergency responders while his daughter lay broken when she fell at least eight feet onto concrete.
In April, Mike Werner was cooking dinner in his Lacombe neighbourhood home when one of his children came running upstairs to tell Werner that his three-year-old daughter had fallen off their deck.
Werner ran outside to find his wife holding his daughter. His first reaction was to take her to the hospital.
“I was on my way out the door with her, and I was going to rush her to the Stollery (Children’s Hospital), and I thought … this is not right, I should phone for an ambulance,” Werner said.
Werner works in the emergency response field and was aware that moving his daughter might cause complications.
When they called for an ambulance his daughter was “conscious, somewhat.”
“I even told them what I needed, I need the ambulance, I needed the fire department, right away, this is serious,” Werner said. He told them that she’d fallen about eight feet onto concrete.
Minutes passed – Werner’s not sure how many – and he called back to find out where the ambulance was.
“The dispatcher had told me they are en route, we don’t know exactly where they are but they’re en route,” he said, though his own experience suggests they would have been aware of exactly where the ambulance was through GPS tracking.
“Another forever goes by, it felt like,” and Werner called again, told this time the ambulance was on St. Albert Trail and McKenney Avenue.
When the medics arrived, he felt they seemed pretty nonchalant and confused by his urgency. It had taken about 19 minutes, Werner said, noting that time frame is what AHS told him.
Werner emphasized once the EMS medics were on scene and aware of the gravity of the situation, they were great.
His daughter was loaded into the ambulance, and by this time she was mostly unresponsive. She spent four days in the Stollery with a fractured skull, a broken collarbone and a major concussion. Werner said she did not need surgery.
She’s fine now, but Werner said the medics told his wife in the ambulance the call had been coded a bravo, which is the least serious on the dispatch call list. Werner thinks it should have received a more serious code.
Werner took his concerns to Alberta Health Services and learned that the ambulance had been dispatched from Edmonton because the St. Albert-based ambulances were busy.
“I also was questioning as to why fire was not dispatched to this call,” Werner said, noting he lives close to a fire station.
Alberta Health Services looked into his complaints, he said.
“They did their investigation and they felt that everything was how it should be, the dispatcher didn’t miscode it, according to them,” Werner said.
He’s coming forward with his family’s story to let people know that there are concerns with the dispatch system, which was changed to a borderless system a few years ago. This means St. Albert-based ambulances can be dispatched outside the city, while ambulances from other places can be dispatched here.
“Your EMS services, your ambulance services, are probably not what you think,” Werner said. “The one time you need it and they take almost 20 minutes.”
A written statement from Dale Weiss, executive director of EMS Edmonton Zone, was provided by email from AHS in response to a request for comment on Werner’s experience.
The statement states they have spoken with the family about the details of the incident, but confirmed Werner’s note that a review found the call was “evaluated appropriately and the correct response was dispatched.”
Weiss said AHS “understand and appreciate their concerns and want to make sure we are providing high-quality care to every patient.”
“At times, an Edmonton unit or another AHS ambulance is closest to a 911 call and will respond. Similarly, St. Albert-based ambulances sometimes respond to calls outside their community – this is a direct benefit to the patient that is made possible through having one, collaborative dispatch system,” Weiss’ statement states.
