OLDS — An announcement by the provincial government that it is creating 100 new Emergency Medical Service (EMS) positions and extending 70 temporary positions is a good thing, says a spokesman for a committee to improve ambulance service in Olds.
“Addition of more personnel and more trucks on the road is always a good thing and I believe it will help with the amount of times that rural ambulances are called into the cities to cover their short-sightedness,” Daryl Lowey wrote in an email.
The province’s Health Ministry announced the new positions Wednesday, May 25. The goal is to ease a shortage of paramedics in Alberta.
Most of the new positions are slated for Calgary and Edmonton. However, it was also announced that the central, south and north zones will each see 10 positions extended until March, 2023.
Health Minister Jason Copping said the new positions are included in the provincial government’s 2022 budget.
The announcement came after new Alberta Health Services Emergency Services quarterly data was released.
It indicated that ambulance response times got worse over the past year, especially in urban areas.
The Health Sciences Association of Alberta (HSAA) which represents EMS personnel, said the situation is so bad that red alerts – when no ambulances are available in certain areas to respond to emergencies – have become more and more frequent.
HSAA president Michael Parker told reporters that Wednesday’s announcement is not enough to solve the problems plaguing the system.
The Olds committee was formed last November to express concerns about ambulance availability and related issues in Olds and area.
However, Lowey said it has not met for “quite some time.”
“We kind of took a wait-and-see attitude with what was happening in the province,” he wrote, adding there was concern the group was getting “too involved in union politics which is not a direction we wanted to go.”
Lowey plans to email the membership to see if there’s interest in holding a meeting in late June to determine if enough progress has been made regarding their concerns.
“So far we've had support from (Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills MLA) Nathan Cooper and others. It's a slow process, but I think it might be moving in the right direction. Time will tell," Lowey said.
