Feature article November 18, 2004
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Ambulance service seeks enhancements from County, City
by Jeff Green
A letter to Kingston Mayor Harvey Rosen, warning about the inadequacy of ambulance service in the City of Kingston, has made a splash in the Kingston media this week. The letter by Terry Baker of OPSEU may have come at an opportune time for the County Emergency Services Coordinator Paul Charbonneau.
The County of Frontenac runs the ambulance service for Kingston as well as the County, under a joint funding arrangement, and Charbonneau has been seeking enhancements for the service in budget discussions for the year 2005.
We agree with Mr. Bakers comments. Our resources are being put to the maximum at certain times. We cant possibly have enough ambulances on the road to meet our demand, he said.
Terry Baker works for OPSEU local 462, the union that represented paramedics working in the City of Kingston before the ambulance service was turned into a County service at the beginning of 2004.
Currently, paramedics within the County ambulance service are not represented by any union, but Charbonneau said that the County and OPSEU local 462 are in negotiations aimed at establishing a first collective agreement.
Bakers letter said that it is common for all of the available ambulances within the city to be tied up, and this constitutes a threat to public health.
One of the Emergency Services Coordinators functions is to monitor response times and something called unit hour utilization data, which tracks how busy the ambulances, and the paramedics who operate them, are.
The information we have gathered confirms what we hear from the paramedics; we need more resources. Code 4 (emergency) calls have increased by 90% since 1996, 11% in 2004 alone. This puts more stress on the emergency system, Charbonneau said.
Charbonneau is seeking to place an extra ambulance in service 24 hours a day within the city of Kingston, at a cost of $598,673 each year. He is also asking for an enhancement to the rural service offered out of the Parham ambulance station. Currently there is one ambulance available 24 hours a day out of Parham, and an Emergency Response Vehicle (ERV) 12 hours a day. ERVs provide emergency service but do not have the capacity of an ambulance. Charbonneau would like to replace the ERV in Parham with an ambulance that would be available 12 hours a day. This would cost $141,416 each year. An enhancement to the Wolfe Island volunteer service, at a cost of $7,811 is also being sought.
If accepted, the enhancements will cost $745,900 more each year, with the lions share being paid by the City of Kingston.
Currently there are between three and six ambulances available within the City of Kingston at different times of the day and night. There is one Emergency Response Vehicle available 24 hours a day.
The County of Frontenac is considering its draft budget for 2005 this week, but will not produce its final budget until early in 2005.
