Former Alberta paramedic says rural patients being left without ambulances

A former Alberta paramedic says Alberta Health Services (AHS) is sacrificing rural health care to ensure a higher standard of care in Calgary and Edmonton. His comments come just days after it was announced that AHS had declared a red alert in Calgary because no ambulances were available to answer calls.

“There’s no consideration for code red in rural areas,” George Porter told 770 CHQR’s Danielle Smith.

READ MORE: EMS calls red alert as winter storm blew through Calgary Thursday morning

LISTEN: George Porter points to problems dispatching ambulances in rural Alberta

View link »

Porter, who was a paramedic in Alberta for 43 years, has been an outspoken critic of AHS.

He told 770 CHQR that his longest response time when he worked as a paramedic was one hour and 17 minutes.

“It’s not a Calgary problem; it’s a province-wide problem,” he said when asked about the most recent red alert in Calgary on Thursday.

MLA David Swann echoed those concerns when speaking Monday about ambulance wait times.

“I hear some pretty ridiculous stories about EMS coming all the way across the province, in some cases, for a condition that should have been dealt with more locally, but there was insufficient EMS staff.”

Swann added that triage wait times are also having an impact.

AHS data released Monday by the Alberta Liberals shows paramedics are having to wait a median time of one hour before transferring a patient into a nurse’s care. Swann suggests that adds up to about $20 million in lost time.

“Something has to change here and it may be that some heads have to roll in the EMS hierarchy,” he said.

In a statement following the red alert  last week, AHS said severe weather, as occurred on Thursday, can put pressure on EMS operations and that it responds by “repositioning units from other communities, deferring non-urgent transfers, deploying supervisors and using single-paramedic response units.”

It said red alerts usually last a short amount of time.

Swann is calling on AHS to release that data. He wants to know how often red alerts are called and how long each red alert remains in effect. He told Global News he is currently waiting on the results of a FOIP request.

LISTEN: Danielle Smith takes a call from a listener concerned about ambulance wait times

View link »

READ MORE: Calgary’s ‘red alert’ points to ‘medical crisis’ in Alberta: paramedic union president

But Porter said AHS’ practice of “plucking ambulances out of rural areas” puts patients in those communities at risk.

“Let me paint you a picture here,” he said. “A code red is over when you have one ambulance clear off the table to respond for an entire city.”

“You have all these rural units and every ambulance in the city tied up. And so finally you get one ambulance that becomes available at Foothills hospital, and that huge rural area, as well as the city – that one ambulance has to cover that entire thing.”

“Is patient care compromised? Absolutely, it’s compromised,” he added.

AHS said in a statement on Monday that the “borderless system” allows it to move regional EMS resources as the system demands to provide the best coverage to all communities.

“This helps all communities because EMS can monitor resources and call volumes and then move vehicles around to areas that need the most support,” the statement said.

Swann agrees that patients are suffering and he says paramedics are also suffering.

“Every indication is that it is affecting not only patients’ risks but also the EMS staff risks, who are trying desperately to get to places where they shouldn’t perhaps be trying– because of inefficient use of resources,” he said.

Porter said ambulances in rural areas are also frequently tied up on inter-hospital transports that can put them out of commission for hours.

“Here’s a real scenario: the ambulance out of Vulcan gets sent to Calgary to take a patient from Vulcan hospital to Calgary to have insoles fitted for their shoes and you’re gone for four to six hours for a wait and return,” he said.

“So that’s four to six hours where there is no ambulance coverage in that large rural geographical area.”

He suggested AHS should have an alternate service to transport patients who are not in need of emergency help.

“I’ve said for years, you cannot, cannot be doing that.”

AHS said it is improving the way it uses emergency vehicles for non-urgent patient transfers.

“We now have 24 non-ambulance transfer vehicles across Alberta, including six in the south zone, that are able to transport stable patients instead of using emergency vehicles.”