DIDSBURY — The municipal council has been updated on Emergency Medical Services (EMS) activities, plans and challenges.
The review came during the recent regularly scheduled council meeting, held in person and on YouTube.
Locally-based EMS staff responded to more than 1,100 calls over the past 12 months, council heard.
Randy Bryksa, associate director of EMS operations in Alberta Health Services Calgary zone, which includes Didsbury, and Chris Baker, District 3 manager, appeared before council as a delegation.
The men spoke about EMS resources in Didsbury and district, call volumes, ambulances serving the area, communities served, transportation destinations for Didsbury ambulances, response times, and current challenges and mitigation strategies.
“We are always looking for opportunities for improvement,” said Baker. “Any time suggestions might come up or suggestions or concerns being brought forward, we are also interested in listening to what the discussions might be.”
EMS officials are meeting with municipal elected officials to share information, address concerns, and look for opportunities for improvements.
Didsbury has one, 24-hour advanced life support ambulance in operations seven days a week.
“Typically when we are in smaller communities we talk about our resources being on peak times, but that’s not a concern here in Didsbury,” he said.
Support systems in place in Didsbury include Didsbury District Health Services, medical first response model with Didsbury Fire Department, air ambulance support and response, and community automated external defibrillator with one registered in Didsbury.
“We are supported by Carstairs with an ambulance that works 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and we are supported by a full complement of other 24-hour ambulances that work in Olds,” he said.
Between April 2021 and March 2022, a total of 1,129 calls were responded to by Didsbury ambulance services.
Top units responding to calls in Didsbury were the Didsbury EMS (40 per cent of total), Olds (14 per cent), Carstairs (10 per cent) and Calgary (nine per cent).
Didsbury EMS responded to calls in numerous communities, including Calgary (36 per cent), Didsbury (23 per cent), Mountain View County (eight per cent) and Olds (eight per cent).
“If you do a call here in Didsbury and you transport your patient into the city of Calgary and the city of Calgary has no available ambulances, that ambulance is getting pulled into service in the city of Calgary,” he said.
“And when that occurs from time to time, it’s very difficult to break from from that vortex, shall we say, if a high call volume area is pulling an ambulance constantly back into it.”
Top destinations for Didsbury EMS were to Calgary hospitals (56 per cent), Didsbury hospital (39 per cent), and Red Deer (one per cent).
In February, EMS in Alberta implemented the new Metro Response Plan in an effort to reduce the frequency of suburban/rural resources coming into Calgary.
“We are working very hard to get those ambulances back out to the community and we’ve had great success with these initiatives,” he said.
Challenges facing the EMS service include increased volume levels, prolonged hospital waits, fluctuating staffing levels, and suburban/rural resources being called to respond in Calgary.
“Within the last two years we have seen a 30 per cent sustained increase in our call volume,” said Bryksa. “We’ve ramped up significantly, so obviously with that comes an impact on service. We continue to try to find ways, as we continue to build out the service, to make sure that we are matching that demand is to continue to look for efficiencies in the system, to make sure we are able to actually meet the service demand levels without impact response time and access to care.”
One of the key mitigating efforts now being used is to triage low acuity 911 calls, he said.
“A number of the 911 calls that come into the system truly necessarily need an ambulance urgently,” he said. “So we’ve been utilizing a system with our dispatch centre where we use a physician that is part of our online medical control group to continue to evaluate calls as they come in.
“So when our system is under a surge stress point, we can triage those acuity calls and make sure that we have ambulances available for those life-saving events that we respond to.”
A dedicated inter-facility transfer ambulance has now been stationed in Airdrie to transfer patients around the district, freeing up other ambulances for emergency calls, he said.
“We are stopping or reducing the amount of time that we are having to use the emergency ambulance out of the community in order to make that transfer happen,” he said.
The transfer ambulance can also be used for emergency calls if necessary, he said.
“We are getting good value for that ambulance resource,” he said.
Bryksa said EMS is committed to making regular future reports to area municipalities regarding call volumes and other challenges.
Town council accepted the EMS presentation as information.
