In recent years representatives of Alberta Health Services have been touring the rural areas of Calgary Zone, and of those meetings there is a clear overarching commonality, that the AHS EMS system is borderless and that this is a good thing. It began as something that would help the rural areas, and lesson the need of those communities to have to expand their EMS resources as population demand increased. The problem however is that this has become a phrase, and a cheap trick of musical chairs where communities lose their EMS resources due to the city demand for them outstripping their own. Ambulances always on the move to portray the idea adequate coverage but does it ring true? What AHS will not discuss is that at the end of that long conga line of Ambulances relocating is a community that is being stripped of its resources entirely.
Global TV did an interview with retired Paramedic Don Sharpe about non-emergent transfers to which AHS made a statement that their reliance on Rural Ambulances has decreased, and that they expect that trend to continue.
You can view that interview here: https://globalnews.ca/video/10335225/are-rural-communities-suffering-from-a-paramedic-shortage-in-calgary/
It then raises the question, if AHS says that it is on a positive trend, what does that trend look like?
According to these stats in 2023:
Claresholm's Ambulance spent 3.5 hours in Calgary.
Diamond Valley's Ambulance spent 44 hours in Calgary.
High River's Ambulance spent 124 hours in Calgary.
Nanton's Ambulance spent 13.8 hours in Calgary.
Okotoks's two Ambulances spent 1386.2 hours in Calgary.
Priddis's Ambulance spent 748.1 hours in Calgary.
Vulcan's Ambulance spent 3.3 hours in Calgary.
Thats a total of 2322.9 hours that rural Ambulances south of Calgary were assigned to the city, the equivalent of 96.7 days; furthermore, that omits Ambulances that would be considered North of Calgary, and Strathmore. AHS touts 96.7 days as a success. If that's success to Alberta Health Services EMS management team one has to ask what is a failure?
Meanwhile in those Communities there are significant call volumes, part of this was discussed in an earlier post called the Priddis problem, but it holds true amongst all of these communities, even with call volume enough to justify the existence of an Ambulance they are routinely flexed out of their communities.
Alberta Health Services further does not discuss this concept at it's meetings with municipalities, when you examine a community like Okotoks, with a call volume of over 1800, if AHS's Southern Communications centre decides that it will move one of that towns Ambulances to Calgary, there is only one unit left. If a 911 event comes in, as happened 1893 times in the last 15 months, there is no Ambulance available to respond. Thus an Ambulance will have to be flexed into Okotoks. There are two options for that to happen, either High River can move north, or Diamond Valley can move east. Once this happens both those communities will require an ambulance come in to cover their towns, with coverage options in either Priddis (assuming they too have not already been moved to the city) going to Diamond Valley, or Nanton moving to High River. In either case two communities lose their Ambulance coverage.
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