Image Credit: Submitted by B.C. Emergency Health Services
August 27, 2019 - 6:00 PM
Despite the recent addition of 46 full-time equivalent paramedics, more work still needs to be done, a B.C. Emergency Health Services official said.
Joe Acker, director of clinical and professional practice with emergency health services, said that while the increase in staffing has had a positive impact, the region remains behind.
“There is no question. I think we’re still behind if we look at the number of ambulances per population,” Acker said, citing the number of paramedics and ambulances stationed in other regions across the country. “This is really a start to where we need to go moving forward.”
According to a Two Year Progress report, 46 regular full-time equivalent paramedic positions have been added in Kamloops, Kelowna, West Kelowna, Lake Country, Trail and Chase.
However, while more attention is required, Acker said the additions have a noticeable impact on response times in the Interior. While statistics on a community by community level aren’t yet available, Acker said the region has seen response times drop by an average of 20 to 30 seconds per call.
“When you’re talking about response times of eight or nine minutes, that’s a lot,” Acker said.
Before the additions, many larger Interior communities acted as a hub for paramedical services in outlying communities. However, issues would then arise where the on-duty paramedics were on call and auxiliary units would be paged.
“We have full-time paramedics in places like Kelowna that were supported by auxiliary units,” Acker said. “The problem is something they (auxiliary ambulances) can take up to 30 minutes to respond.”
To mitigate those issues, paramedics from these auxiliary units were brought on full-time as part of the three-year action plan funded by the Ministry of Health.
“The action plan that we’re two years into now, we made a compelling argument to the ministry… that our organization needed to add resources,” Acker said and added that emergency health services is currently working on improving response times in the Fraser Valley.
According to emergency health services, the highlights of year two also include the implementation of the community paramedicine program, a new clinical response model, a new electronic patient record system and expanded at home paramedic care for palliative patients.
Part of the problem that contributed to the need for a three-year action plan was an outdated system for assessing a community's need. Under the new method, Acker said that data is collected on various factors, including calling trends, demographics and population as opposed to a population versus service equation.
“That’s really an old and unsophisticated way of doing things,” Acker said. “Places likes Kelowna where the community matures, we need to add more. Communities like Vernon, which has a big overdose problem, we might have more calls there than another community of a similar size.”
Shift changes and staffing additions, or in some cases removals, will continue to be monitored, Acker said.
“We need to continue monitoring the response times and add services as needed."
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