St. Albert never liked the idea of giving up its integrated fire and EMS service for separate entities, including a one-size-fits-all ambulance system run by the province. It meant saying goodbye to efficient emergency services that saw cross-trained firefighter-paramedics switch between the two jobs in the event of heavy EMS calls or a fire. Those personnel are still cross-trained, but St. Albert has lost the flexibility to send a firefighter on an ambulance call in an advanced life support unit when the city’s two ambulances are in use. In a non-integrated system, if the ambulances are in use and St. Albert needs backup, it’s going to have to come from outside the community.
That became the reality two years ago, despite the loud objections of the dozen or so mid-sized municipal operators of integrated fire-EMS systems. Since then, the City of St. Albert has repeatedly pressed for meaningful statistics and benchmarks to gauge the new system’s success versus the former integrated model. The city now has some for March to November 2010 and they’re not pretty. Ninety per cent of the time, St. Albert ambulances are getting to calls within 10 minutes, 44 seconds — slightly below the city’s long-established benchmark of nine minutes, 90 per cent of the time. The truly disturbing numbers are response times from outside St. Albert when the city’s two ambulances are tied up, something that happens 109 times a month, or 3.5 times day. Calls from Edmonton arrive in 22:05, and slightly longer at 23:44 from Spruce Grove, Morinville or Parkland County.
The out-of-town responses are so unnerving, in fact, Mayor Nolan Crouse has gone public with his anger and demands for a third ambulance to improve St. Albert’s emergency coverage. This comes at a time when the city is trying to renegotiate an ambulance contract extension with Alberta Health Service’s EMS division. It’s a calculated move to be sure, trying to leverage public opinion and force the province to reach into the coffers for funding for a third ambulance. Negotiating through the media — as is happening with the city’s terse press release on the matter and AHS’ verbal and written responses — can get ugly and inappropriate, which is why as a rule the city doesn’t do it. In this case it’s not only understandable, it’s warranted.
St. Albert residents have every right to be concerned with the level of service under the new provincial scheme — despite counterarguments from AHS which has called the nine minutes, 90 per cent “antiquated,” hailing from a day when only paramedics could operate defibrillators. Today, “defibrillators are on every street corner,” said Trevor Maslyk, AHS executive director of operations for the north/Edmonton zone. How reassuring.
Flippant remarks notwithstanding, AHS cannot so easily dismiss the nine minute, 90 per cent benchmark. It’s an internationally accepted standard used in major centres even larger and more congested than the Capital region, including Toronto and Vancouver. It’s also the only benchmark that gives meaningful comparison to response times today and what they were before the provincial takeover. Given AHS’ track record for making news for all the wrong reasons, one has to wonder if there’s some rationale for not wanting to stack the new scheme against what worked in the past. Reasonable arguments deserve reasonable answers and St. Albert is making a strong case for extra ambulances, be it for this city or other jurisdictions. A province-knows-best approach ignores good advice at the local level; hopefully it’s not the public that suffers.
