Buckle up, Calgary zone. If you’re tired of the same old stories spun by AHS EMS management and want real change, read on. No matter if some call our information “out of context”, we have the real data from Alberta Health Services in freedom of information requests. Yes, this 'Halloween themed' story is late, we don't have the luxury of AHS meeting rooms and all day to work on this.
Let's start with Anne’s recent memo to EMS staff. It opens with: “I want to start off by thanking each and every one of you for your incredible hard work and dedication. You are a valued member of this team, and your commitment is the driving force behind everything we accomplish.” This is a tired script Paramedics have heard too many times. It's the antithis of “based on the balance of probabilities” (we can’t prove you did it, but we’re going to discipline you anyway) staff also hear too often. The truth is, Paramedics are achieving results in spite of management, not because of, or with them.
Ryan Middleton’s recent work revealed AHS EMS is staffing 33 fewer ambulances in 2024 than in 2019. With thousands of vacant shifts in the Calgary zone alone, it’s no wonder that today Paramedics have to work harder than they ever had to five years ago. Often clocking in 12-hour shifts without breaks or a 'cool down' because it’s “just too busy", Paramedics are still being repeatedly forced back into service without a rest was a thing of the past. Paramedics today last eight years on average before burning out and calling it quits.
AS for Hospital offload delays - Offload delays might show on a graph as improving steadily since 2022, but ask any Calgary Zone Paramedic about the last 3 weeks. Hallway Waiting is back in force. A closer look at the data shows offload times meeting the 45-minute mark just 43% of the time since the Offload Policy was created. Since March 2023 it's only been successful Seven Times .Out of 572 days.… EMS has only hit the 45-minute benchmark on 7 occasions. They're best score was never higher than 57%.
EMS is getting ambulances back on the road faster—sometimes, but that isn’t much comfort to the people dialling 911 and then having to to wait in “pending available resource” limbo. From January 1 - Sept 1 of this year, 7816 calls for EMS were made to wait for an Ambulances in pending, while the Public and Paramedics are told by EMS leadership to celebrate with them because Red Alerts are on the decline. Our FOIP data reveals the sad truth that RED ALERTS are only lower because as soon as Available Units drops below 4, EMS Dispatch begins putting calls into pending status. That's why there have been only 35 RED ALERTS in the first 8 months of 2024. This is what EMS leaders now want us to celebrate, that they've figured out a way to congratulate themselves while making 7816 people wait for help. Help us out; how do we even calculate the adverse patient outcomes this is causing?
We can learn at lot talking to front line Paramedics but the data is damning. Why was this information left out of the update from EMS leadership? Because save Dispatch and managers, they told no one they were manipulating the data this way. Pending Events is an open secret among EMS Crews but our meetings with Alberta Government Officials makes us suspect they truly are not even aware of the extent to which this is happening.
We did have a meeting with Premier Smith to discuss these issues.
One of our goals is to have the Government of Alberta demand that AHS EMS explain themselves. Can any elected official confidently stand up in front of their constituents with performance metrics that AHS EMS has provided them? We discussed this phenomenon previously in our post “Orange is the new Red”. When we talk about this with members of the Public, the first question they always ask is, "How will I know if my request for an Ambulance has been placed in Pending?". The answer is, "You Won't".
Now instead of logging thousands, if not tens of thousands of Red Alerts, they log a higher number of Orange alerts 13325 spanning more than 102 hours! So fewer red alerts, but truly reflective reporting on this is absent. Any chance we're reading this wrong? Ann's memo celebrates a steep decline in RED ALERTS when what really happened was a quiet rule change that no one was told about. Is this 'good management', an innocent mistake or malfeasence? 13325 Orange Alerts is a significant number. We believe the issue requires an explanation. Since EMS leaders aren't great at answering questions from us, we'll have to find out some other way.
What we found even more concerning about this entire matter is that these abysmal numbers were achieved even with them taking Rural Ambulances from their home communities and pulling them into the city nearly 1000 times. We knew the Relocation Requests to Calgary were high but this is rediculous. When we caught Tony Pasich and the 'EMS Ghost Riders' booking in camera meetings with Rural Municipal Councils we figured they just wanted to hide their phoney presentations from us. Until we rec'd this latest FOIP data we had no idea how bad it was. Rural Councillors should be furious. Was it even worth it to poach those Ambulances when your performance was still ultimately going to be an abject failure? When will Rural Communities say 'enough is enough' of a borderless system that only shares AHS inability to manage across the entire Alberta EMS system?
When a supervisor tells a crew that needs a break to eat that ‘Metro is in a deep Red Alert’, it likely doesn’t even match the statistics that will be reported to them, the provincial government, or the public later. If only there were a better word for it... like gaslighting. Keep this in mind though as you’re rushed out of the hospital under the guise of 'helping patients'. In reality, you’re just helping pad the numbers of slanted statistics, as patient care lags further in the shadows.
This is supreme irony when you consider Anne mentions “Every step forward, no matter how small brings us closer to our shared goal of delivering the best care possible.” Paramedics might have that goal but EMS "leadership" seems only to care about their statistics. Could this get scarier? YUP! When you consider that since January 1st 2024 to October 14th 2024, JUST IN THE CALGARY ZONE, there have been 6101 vacant EMS resources, and required 46 pages to display the entire list! That’s on average 21 Ambulances a day in Calgary Zone. We here at www.wheresmyambulance.com do not believe that any manager should be putting in an update to their staff “Every step forward” when their Ambulance shut down list in a single zone is 46 pages long. We believe any manager that does that shouldn’t have a job anymore.
**Of note, recently we were told by someone who works for the Province that there was no evidence Paramedics were being held in EMS Park, or that there was reduced Staffing on Statutory holidays showing better than the daily average. The Zone stat holiday vacancy rate on average is 11 compared to the Zone Average of 21**
At the end of Anne’s memo, she talks about “celebrating achievements” and making “steady progress.” The only thing worth celebrating here is the relentless effort of Paramedics who carry this broken system on their backs, and they’re doing it despite management’s unwavering commitment to a toxic work culture. Without the Paramedics the system would crash around managements feet and they’d have no one to blame but themselves. The staff who are still here—after hundreds have exited the full-time roster for casual roles or outright left the career all together—are not driven by management’s “support.” They’re holding on out of sheer grit, loyalty to their patients, and the hope that someone will eventually pull the emergency brake on this runaway train. It cannot possibly always be this bad right? Well, when the same old people keep doing the same old things…. Though it would be fitting if the ship HMS AHS EMS was a ghost ship for the purposes of our halloween post!
This is made starkly worse when you consider any rational person would call this a staffing crisis. Hundreds of Paramedics have marched off the job managers and have given them an indifferent shrug. I guess there is nothing they could have done about the fact that they hated working for AHS EMS so much. It surely has nothing to do with their toxic "Leadership" and using the system to abuse Paramedics for years. Heaven forbid ALL managers and supervisors treated them well instead of "meat in the seat" they might still be here and www.wheresmyambulance.com wouldn't exist. What a novel idea right? Imagine senior leadership showing up to work Sunday morning just to say thanks to all the exhausted crews coming off shift.
Now here is where the public relations machine goes BURRRR. During the Calgary Stampede fiasco AHS PR stated “According to AHS, EMS staffing increased by 19.2 per cent between December 2019 and May 2024.” Certainly didn’t seem like that till we looked at the numbers! Technically yes this might be true, and technically management just going “we can just hire more” would also be correct…. Except they’re not even doing that! They’ve in four years in Calgary zone replaced 371 RFT resignations with 50 RFT hires and 32 TFT hires; furthermore, another 330 Casual to full time changes which wouldn’t even cover annual WCB injury rates as we reviewed in “Dude wheres my staff”. That 19.2% expansion? Well in the Calgary zone it looks like 353 new casual employees make up the lions share(https://www.wheresmyambulance.com/post/dude-wheres-my-staff-a-deep-dive-into-alberta-s-ems-staffing-crisis-one-resignation-at-a-time)! A lot of good that does over say the Stampede, if you want to see what a disaster that was go back and read our story on it, but another great example being the August long weekend .
Leaning on 1753 hours of overtime, 500 orange alerts that lasted 4.12 hours where 911 calls would be stacked. Over that weekend there were 38 relocation requests sent to rural Ambulances too redeploy to Calgary, completing 55 emergency calls in Calgary. But things are getting better so long as we take Anne at her word… We know, it sent shivers down our spines too. These aforementioned stats that we shared are only over two and a half days hardly an indicator of the direction leadership tells us they are taking EMS in.
So here we are, Calgary Zone: peeling back the layers on a truly terrifying year in EMS. If you find value in this horror show we’re revealing—if you think these stories deserve floodlights, not just a dim bulb in the basement—consider helping us keep up the fight by supporting us on GiveSendGo. Your contributions have already fuelled this work, allowing us to expand our coverage into Alberta’s Southeast Zone with their first post to come within the month, and a sticker campaign to go along with it! Talks with Paramedics in North Zone are ongoing Our goal? Shining a light on every corner of the Province and every donation is another nail in the coffin of the management’s PR machine. We want to get the lid on that thing tight to make sure no Zombies jump out at us! If you’re working in other parts of the province and you think you have a story to tell we want to hear from you! So reach out to us at ambulanceman4@gmail.com!
As for those of us who made it through another year? We’ll be here, prying open more of these grim closets and bringing you the horror show that AHS EMS would rather you didn’t see. Management’s little monthly updates might not offer you solace but we hope ours will. We’re so happy to learn that AHS EMS management is going to deliver a monthly progress update, debunking it will give us no shortage of things to do here in addition to our provincial expansion.
Finally, in the beginning of this post we made mention of contests! The dumbest flexes in Alberta! If you’ve been given a flex or as they call it a 'relocation request', we want to know about it! Winners will get a shirt or hat, we're working on something special. So send us your absurd flexes! Rules to protect you from privacy violations are on the Instagram page description. Speaking of instagram you should give us a follow and tell your friends for daily memes @Ambulanceman4.
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