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Local officials raise concerns two weeks into EMS dispatch consolidation

Last Updated Feb 2, 2021 at 1:45 pm MDT

Mayor Don Scott and Fire Chief Jody Butz speak during a Microsoft Teams press conference on February 1, 2020.

FORT MCMURRAY (660 NEWS) – EMS dispatch in the Wood Buffalo region has been consolidated for two weeks and local officials say there have been glaring issues.

Mayor Don Scott has expressed his frustration with the situation and wants the public to know about the kind of service they are receiving.

“Our municipality has had to intervene 20 per cent of the time on calls that AHS has been dealing with,” Scott said during a February 1 press conference. “That just goes to show that there is a significant problem.”

Scott referenced a recent snowmobile accident in Anzac. He said there is a local volunteer fire department in that area with medical capability.

“If somebody gets injured, the way the old system worked is folks here would call the local people in Anzac, they would be first on the scene and they could administer medical care,” Scott said, adding that in this recent situation, AHS ignored the Anzac volunteer fire department and instead dispatched an ambulance located 30 minutes away in Fort McMurray.

“The injuries that were sustained were severe, this person ended up being transferred to Edmonton,” Scott said. “This just exemplifies everything that we predicted would go wrong and shows that every assurance we’ve received has not lived up to the promise that was made.”

However, Darren Sandbeck, Chief Paramedic and Senior Provincial Director of Emergency Medical Services has a different explanation for what happened on that particular call.

“This 911 call was transferred to AHS by RCMP as an ‘unknown problem’. As per our longstanding agreement that we have with fire departments and medical first responders, this is not an event that the fire department has agreed to respond to,” Sandbeck said. “The closest available ambulance was dispatched with lights and sirens 31 seconds after the 911 call was transferred to our EMS dispatch centre and the crew arrived at the remote rural scene in 32 minutes. There was no delay.”

Sandbeck said AHS EMS dispatches ambulances in the same way municipalities did previously.

Wood Buffalo Fire Chief Jody Butz described what he called “glaring errors” with the consolidation and said since it came into effect on January 19, the region has already experienced two code red situations – which happens when all ambulances are assigned to medical calls leaving no spares.

Butz also claims AHS dispatchers are not familiar with the remote geography of the Wood Buffalo region and referenced a recent 911 call from someone who was urgently requesting an ambulance for a friend in distress.

“[They] had their call transferred three times across this province, requiring the caller to repeat the address of the patient six separate times, resulting in the significant delay in dispatching process,” said Butz, adding this is proof that consolidation of dispatching is putting lives at risk.

Sandbeck said AHS has successfully dispatched ambulances to more than two-thirds of the province for the past decade – fielding more than half a million calls per year in that time.

“As a paramedic of 40 years serving Albertans, I find it extremely disappointing that people would claim we are doing something that is not in the best interests of our patients and Albertans that we serve,” Sandbeck said. “Patient care is at the centre of everything we do at Alberta Health Services.”

Sandbeck confirmed there was a technical outage on January 26 that lasted for 42 minutes and impacted the computer dispatch system. However, he said this outage was unrelated to the recent consolidation and that it would have impacted municipal systems in the same way.

He said more than 20 calls were answered and dispatched appropriately during the outage and that two non-emergency calls were delayed but that patient care was not impacted. AHS is working to find out the cause of the outage.

“Let me be very clear. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that the recent consolidation of EMS dispatch has led to any delays or inappropriate responses in any of the communities where consolidation occurred,” said Sandbeck.

Scott, along with his mayoral counterparts in Calgary, Red Deer, and Lethbridge, are calling for an inquiry into the outage and would like to see EMS consolidation paused until their safety concerns can be addressed.