OLDS — The provincial government is working on improvements to ambulance availability, Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills MLA Nathan Cooper says.
Coun. Dan Daley raised the matter during the Town of Olds council’s Feb. 14 meeting.
“I realize there’s a study going on right now to review that, that system. Do you have any update for us at all on that," he asked.
Demand for ambulances has soared recently, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
As a result, residents in many communities, including Olds, have created committees to pressure the province to solve problems like better ambulance availability.
In late January, Alberta Health Minister Jason Copping announced that the provincial government is creating an emergency medical services (EMS) advisory committee which will provide immediate and long-term recommendations to solve EMS issues.
The committee is expected to provide recommendations by May, with the possibility for some solutions to be implemented in the meantime.
The government said it’s also launching a request for proposals for an independent, third-party review into Alberta’s EMS dispatch system. That review is expected to begin this month.
In addition, Alberta Health Services (AHS) chief paramedic Darren Sandbeck outlined a 10-point plan to help increase capacity in the province's EMS system.
That includes some tactics already underway, such as hiring more paramedics to manage staff fatigue in a better way.
Sandbeck said AHS also plans to free up more ambulance availability by diverting some non-emergency calls to other phone lines like 811.
Another idea is to allow some non-emergency transfers to be done via other ways than by ambulance.
Yet another suggestion is to end the practice of automatically dispatching ambulances to non-injury vehicle collisions.
Cooper referenced the plan in his answer.
“Some of those 10 points will make an immediate impact and then hopefully (we’ll) finally get to a longer term solution for EMS, because the current situation is totally untenable and I expressed that directly to the minister,” he said.
“It is a massive concern," Cooper said, adding he and his caucus expressed concern for ambulance availability back when they were the Opposition in the legislature.
“When I was an Opposition member, we were frantic about this,” he said.
Cooper said the issue only seemed to gain big traction when it affected Alberta’s largest cities.
“It’s unfortunate that that’s what it took to get here,” he said.
