Citizens Concerned over future of Denbigh Ambulance

by Jeff Green (with files from Steven Giles)

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One hundred and fifty citizens, mostly seniors, crammed into the Denbigh community hall on March 27, to talk about the Denbigh ambulance.

The meeting was called by Karen Gillingham, a former paramedic. Karen Gillingham later told the News that she has been increasingly concerned about the number of times the Denbigh ambulance has been re-positioned in Northbrook in recent months, and when she learned that Lennox and Addington County will be reviewing its ambulance service this year, she worried that the review would lead to the closing of the Denbigh ambulance base entirely.

The request for proposal for the review includes several references to the difficulties the county is having in maintaining the Denbigh - Northbrook service and includes language which Gillingham, and the people at the Denbigh meeting, find troubling.

Among the listed components of the review are the following:

“Assess the Northbrook – Denbigh Division and its current use of volunteer staffing in order to determine the future viability of service delivery due to rapidly escalating costs, low call volumes, difficulty to attract and retain staffing and competing demand for resources to be applied elsewhere in the County.

“Assess the dependency of neighbouring municipalities on the Northbrook – Denbigh Division from a service and fiscal standpoint and explore with them new partnership arrangements in order to provide an appropriate level of service in a remote, sparsely populated, low call volume region.”

After hearing a litany of complaints about the current state of the service, particularly the standby policy, a committee was formed, and a large delegation will be traveling to a meeting of Lennox and Addington Council in Napanee this month.

Addington Highlands Reeve Henry Hogg attended the meeting in Denbigh, and afterwards he told the News, “I did take a bit of heat but I understand the concerns that people are raising. Our quality of life is going to be adversely affected if the ambulance is taken away. Remember we are also short of doctors so the ambulance is key to our medical service as a whole.”

Hogg added that he has sent a notice of motion to County Council to state that there will be no diminishment of service as the result of “this or any other service review. I don’t know it the other members of council will support this, but we’ll see. But people should remember, no decisions have been made.”

Tom Bedford, the Lennox and Addington Ambulance Service Manager, was contacted by the News early this week, and the first thing he did was clarify the current standby policy.

As of February 2008, the Denbigh ambulance is only moved to the Northbrook station when the Northbrook ambulance is actually out on a call. When the Napanee ambulance is called out, the Northbrook ambulance moves to Tamworth on standby, but the Denbigh ambulance now stays where it is.

Previously the Denbigh ambulance was moved to Northbrook whenever the Northbrook ambulance went to Tamworth, but that is no longer the case, according to Bedford.

As far as fears that the Denbigh ambulance would be closing as the result of the service review, Bedford said, “I’m not sure where the rumour started. At no time has there been a plan to shut down the base in Denbigh. We have to let the review do its job, and a major part of this review will be giving people an opportunity to express their concerns and their ideas with regards to ambulance service.

“I appreciate the concerns, and we are trying to look at this thing in as fair a light as possible; we’re not trying to do anything behind people’s backs.

A part of the review, Lennox and Addington has been approaching neighbouring counties to talk about ambulance service in sparsely populated areas.

In a power point presentation given by Lennox and Addington CAO Larry Keech to the Renfrew County Council there was a map which shows the location of the calls answered by he Denbigh ambulance in 2006. Of the 253 calls listed, 104 were in Lennox and Addington, 73 in Renfrew County, 60 in Frontenac County, and 16 in Hastings County.