Alberta recruiting EMS workers, trying to free up ambulances to put end to red alerts

Alberta is attempting to lessen the strain on Alberta's emergency responders by hiring more paramedics and freeing up workers already in the system.

By September, Alberta Health Services is expected to fill 100 full-time EMS positions and extend 70 other temporary roles.

The move is being made as the health ministry pushes forward recommendations made by AHS and a government-appointed EMS advisory committee to create immediate relief for frontline workers.

Among the changes, for one year, the government will allow emergency medical responders (EMRs) – the least-trained kind of EMS practitioner in Alberta – to transfer stable patients without a higher-level paramedic present in non-emergent situations. This would put Alberta in line with B.C. and the other prairie provinces, government officials said.

As well, when there is "no other option," as Health Minister Jason Copping put it, EMRs will be able to respond to urgent calls alongside an advanced care or primary care paramedic.

Copping said at a press conference in Sherwood Park, Alta., both changes would help ensure paramedics can respond to urgent calls.

"We need to get (response times) back within AHS' targets where they were last summer when call volumes started to run up," he told reporters, adding, "That's easy to say. Quite frankly, it's not easy to do."

The president of the Health Sciences Association of Alberta said he was encouraged by the moves, but that they wouldn't "turn the tide of a system in crisis."

“We need to be addressing bigger issues around working conditions, so we can keep the workers we have, and implement staffing strategies that will ensure all EMS resources are fully staffed instead of the current 'just-in-time' approach to staffing," Mike Parker wrote in a statement.

He said the HSAA would have more to contribute in the coming weeks.

OTHER CHANGES

The Alberta government has agreed to implement a number of other recommendations from the EMS advisory committee:

• Work with medical first responder agencies on better supporting EMS;
• Allow firefighter-paramedics working as medical first responders to cancel inbound ambulances when they are not required;
• Have dispatch assess less-urgent calls as such and provide safe alternative care options, like non-medical transport or primary care appointment access;
• Standardize guidelines for wait times for EMS patients at emergency rooms; and
• Create a task force dedicated to addressing offload delays.

Two "efficiencies" are being piloted in cities outside Edmonton.

Strathcona County is taking the third person from its three-member ambulance model to staff two "community response units," whose job it will be to respond within the county only.

Spruce Grove is testing out having their cross-trained firefighter paramedics attend time-critical calls.

All of the recommendations made by the committee will be published in a preliminary report by the end of the month, and in a finalized report in July.

"This is an issue that we need to move on as quickly as possible, so of course, as the recommendations get vetted and get moved forward to the final stages, we're trying to implement them as quickly as possible," said committee co-chair and Highwood MLA R.J. Sigurdson.

While the government pointed to the COVID-19 pandemic as the root of the EMS system's issues, the Alberta NDP's health critic said the problem is actually the government's handling of the pandemic.

"There are some things here that perhaps nibble at the edges, that may improve a couple of small things in the short term, but does very little to address the growing crisis in the health care system," said David Shepherd.

The Official Opposition is calling for casual workers to be offered full-time positions, paramedics to be released from their duties on time, and for the government to dedicate more resources to the drug poisoning crisis and reduce demand on ambulances.

Wait times for an ambulance have been rising across the province, with red alerts being regularly declared in major cities.

In March, the province announced $64 million to get more ambulances and paramedics on the road.