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Ottawa’s ambulance service has had no ambulances to dispatch 22 times in the past two weeks, the city says.
During a “Level Zero,” as it’s called, every ambulance capable of transporting a patient is on its way to a call, occupied with a patient or being cleaned up. That status doesn’t typically come up suddenly: Dispatchers can see it coming and adapt to try to make sure they have reserves. When the service has nine free ambulances, for instance, lower-priority patients are expected to wait for as long as an hour. Broken arms and nursing-home residents feeling poorly wait so that paramedics stay free for heart attacks and car crashes.
So Level Zeros are supposed to be extremely rare. At one point in 2004, the city treated it like a crisis when the paramedic service was hitting Level Zero four times a week — partly because word got out that on one Saturday with a blitz of 911 calls, we reached Level Zero nine times.
Related
The paramedic service’s acting chief, Peter Kelly, in a statement relayed through the city’s communications department, pointed out that having no ambulances available isn’t the same as having no emergency medical responders.
“It should be noted that the Paramedic Service also deploys Rapid Response Units (i.e. paramedic response via emergency sedans), in addition to the deployment of transport units,” he said. “Further, for cardiac arrests, other emergency partners (such as the Ottawa Police Service and Ottawa Fire Services) may also be tiered to respond to the call.”
Those are a bigger part of the emergency system than they were in 2004. But still, the number of Level Zeros shows just how much we rely on the counties outside Ottawa’s borders for ambulances.
They’ve been angry for months about the way we treat them, accusing us of taking advantage of a provincial rule that says the nearest ambulance has to respond to an emergency call, no matter where it’s from. We underfund our paramedic service and that means we’re constantly demanding help from Prescott-Russell, Renfrew, Lanark — anybody who’s got an ambulance nearby.
Sometimes half their ambulance fleets are dealing with calls in the city that aren’t supposed to be their problem. Since last year, we’ve even refused to pay them for it.
On Thursday, city council’s community and protective-services committee agreed to add $5.2 million to our paramedic budget.
“We’re trying to actually fix three-four years of not hiring or not having enough paramedic service,” Osgoode Coun. George Darouze said to Anthony Di Monte, the city’s usual paramedic chief and the acting general manager of emergency services. Darouze’s outer-Ottawa ward particularly depends on help from paramedic services such as Prescott-Russell’s. “It’s very imperative that the city of Ottawa, that the residents of Ottawa, have an essential service like paramedics.”
Di Monte refused to promise the new money would end Level Zero situations.
“Even in a system that’s fully staffed and operational, there can be peaks that bring service to Level Zero,” Di Monte told the council committee.
And fair enough. Crises happen. Occasional Level Zeros will happen just by fluke.
But Di Monte said we’re on the right track. The additional $5.2 million in the 2017 budget will cover 12 paramedic hires. The city added 12 earlier this year (bringing the number on the street to 429, plus another 100 or so supervisory types). Another 12 are due in 2018.
Sounds good, right?
Sort of.
When we had the 2004 freakout, Di Monte said that hiring 14 new paramedics, as he was about to do, would help a lot with the Level Zero problem. It did. The city’s auditor general examined the paramedic service over eight months in 2007 and the report said it reached Level Zero less than once a week in that time. But he was still worried about where things were headed.
The paramedic system had many “areas of clear operational excellence,” auditor Alain Lalonde reported. It was making good use of the resources it had. It just didn’t have enough resources.
When the city hired new paramedics, which it did in spurts, it tended to take stock of what it needed to get back into shape but spread the hires out over several years. We had to stay ahead of demand, not constantly chase after it.
“With lagged implementation of multi-year staffing levels, demand has already increased beyond capacity,” the auditor reported years ago. “Under this model, the paramedic service will always be in ‘catch up’ mode.”
Some big problems plaguing the system in 2007 have been treated. Transferring patients to care in overcrowded emergency rooms can still be time-consuming but it’s better than it was. “Offload nurses” take charge of patients whose lives aren’t in immediate danger, freeing paramedics up to hit the streets again where previously they’d have had to wait and wait and wait.
Ottawa went five years after 2011 without adding paramedics, relying on efficiencies such as these to pick up the slack. When those ran out, we started relying on our neighbours. It saved money but now we’re out of options and our neighbours have had it with our sponging.
So we will, again, hire some paramedics, spread out over several years, playing catch-up. It even takes a while to get new medics trained and certified, Di Monte told the committee the other day, so it’ll be a while before they’re on the job.
Maybe you’ve appreciated the years of small tax increases Mayor Jim Watson has pledged and city council has voted for. This is one of the prices we’re paying for it.
dreevely@postmedia.com
twitter.com/davidreevely
查看原文...
During a “Level Zero,” as it’s called, every ambulance capable of transporting a patient is on its way to a call, occupied with a patient or being cleaned up. That status doesn’t typically come up suddenly: Dispatchers can see it coming and adapt to try to make sure they have reserves. When the service has nine free ambulances, for instance, lower-priority patients are expected to wait for as long as an hour. Broken arms and nursing-home residents feeling poorly wait so that paramedics stay free for heart attacks and car crashes.
So Level Zeros are supposed to be extremely rare. At one point in 2004, the city treated it like a crisis when the paramedic service was hitting Level Zero four times a week — partly because word got out that on one Saturday with a blitz of 911 calls, we reached Level Zero nine times.
Related
- Ottawa has major issues with paramedic dispatching, provincial probe finds
- Ottawa demanding more ambulances from neighbours, but paying less
The paramedic service’s acting chief, Peter Kelly, in a statement relayed through the city’s communications department, pointed out that having no ambulances available isn’t the same as having no emergency medical responders.
“It should be noted that the Paramedic Service also deploys Rapid Response Units (i.e. paramedic response via emergency sedans), in addition to the deployment of transport units,” he said. “Further, for cardiac arrests, other emergency partners (such as the Ottawa Police Service and Ottawa Fire Services) may also be tiered to respond to the call.”
Those are a bigger part of the emergency system than they were in 2004. But still, the number of Level Zeros shows just how much we rely on the counties outside Ottawa’s borders for ambulances.
They’ve been angry for months about the way we treat them, accusing us of taking advantage of a provincial rule that says the nearest ambulance has to respond to an emergency call, no matter where it’s from. We underfund our paramedic service and that means we’re constantly demanding help from Prescott-Russell, Renfrew, Lanark — anybody who’s got an ambulance nearby.
Sometimes half their ambulance fleets are dealing with calls in the city that aren’t supposed to be their problem. Since last year, we’ve even refused to pay them for it.
On Thursday, city council’s community and protective-services committee agreed to add $5.2 million to our paramedic budget.
“We’re trying to actually fix three-four years of not hiring or not having enough paramedic service,” Osgoode Coun. George Darouze said to Anthony Di Monte, the city’s usual paramedic chief and the acting general manager of emergency services. Darouze’s outer-Ottawa ward particularly depends on help from paramedic services such as Prescott-Russell’s. “It’s very imperative that the city of Ottawa, that the residents of Ottawa, have an essential service like paramedics.”
Di Monte refused to promise the new money would end Level Zero situations.
“Even in a system that’s fully staffed and operational, there can be peaks that bring service to Level Zero,” Di Monte told the council committee.
And fair enough. Crises happen. Occasional Level Zeros will happen just by fluke.
But Di Monte said we’re on the right track. The additional $5.2 million in the 2017 budget will cover 12 paramedic hires. The city added 12 earlier this year (bringing the number on the street to 429, plus another 100 or so supervisory types). Another 12 are due in 2018.
Sounds good, right?
Sort of.
When we had the 2004 freakout, Di Monte said that hiring 14 new paramedics, as he was about to do, would help a lot with the Level Zero problem. It did. The city’s auditor general examined the paramedic service over eight months in 2007 and the report said it reached Level Zero less than once a week in that time. But he was still worried about where things were headed.
The paramedic system had many “areas of clear operational excellence,” auditor Alain Lalonde reported. It was making good use of the resources it had. It just didn’t have enough resources.
When the city hired new paramedics, which it did in spurts, it tended to take stock of what it needed to get back into shape but spread the hires out over several years. We had to stay ahead of demand, not constantly chase after it.
“With lagged implementation of multi-year staffing levels, demand has already increased beyond capacity,” the auditor reported years ago. “Under this model, the paramedic service will always be in ‘catch up’ mode.”
Some big problems plaguing the system in 2007 have been treated. Transferring patients to care in overcrowded emergency rooms can still be time-consuming but it’s better than it was. “Offload nurses” take charge of patients whose lives aren’t in immediate danger, freeing paramedics up to hit the streets again where previously they’d have had to wait and wait and wait.
Ottawa went five years after 2011 without adding paramedics, relying on efficiencies such as these to pick up the slack. When those ran out, we started relying on our neighbours. It saved money but now we’re out of options and our neighbours have had it with our sponging.
So we will, again, hire some paramedics, spread out over several years, playing catch-up. It even takes a while to get new medics trained and certified, Di Monte told the committee the other day, so it’ll be a while before they’re on the job.
Maybe you’ve appreciated the years of small tax increases Mayor Jim Watson has pledged and city council has voted for. This is one of the prices we’re paying for it.
dreevely@postmedia.com
twitter.com/davidreevely
查看原文...
