The City of Ottawa needs to hire 145 more paramedics over the next three years and switch to a new, more effective dispatch system, say Ottawa Paramedic Service chief Anthony DiMonte and deputy city manager for community and protective services Steve Kanellakos.
Emergency workers did not have enough ambulances to dispatch 135 times in the last four months, the two men said Thursday as they presented a report to the community and protective services committee.
The report, done by a private company specializing in paramedic responses, shows it takes too long for the city’s paramedics to answer life-threatening calls.
The study also notes Ottawa does not meet its own requirements and the city “is in danger to not meet the less stringent minimum legislated response time standard established by the Ambulance Act.”
To meet the internationally recognized standards, response times must be under eight minutes and 59 seconds, 90 per cent of the time in high-density areas and 15 minutes and 59 seconds in low-density areas.
Between January and June 2008, Ottawa paramedics did not meet these requirements 40 per cent of the time in high-density areas and 35 per cent of the time in less-crowded areas. On average, it took paramedics almost 14 minutes to answer life-threatening calls in high-density areas and more than 21 minutes in low-density areas.
Councilors Peggy Feltmate, Georges Bedard and Diane Deans, who sit on the committee, said that sometimes too many vehicles are sent for non-life threatening calls. Kanellakos said the main problem is that the number of emergency calls received is underestimated.
In the last eight years, there has been a 65-per-cent increase in the number of life-threatening calls, where the city expected a two per-cent increase. One quarter of the calls come from the downtown area, including Centretown.
Both the paramedic chief and deputy city manager advocated switching to dispatch protocol similar to those used in Toronto and Niagara, Ont. They said this system is more efficient that the one currently used in Ottawa.
Two nurses were also hired recently at Civic Campus and General Hospital in order to limit the waiting period for the paramedics during peak hours. According to Di Monte, 300 hours were saved in only two weeks.
Paramedics can use this time answering emergency calls instead of waiting at the hospital’s gate.