Murray Wood: What happened to basic manners?
At the risk of sounding old fashioned, Murray Wood is questioning the manners of some of the people he meets. He says pe...
When a person calls 911, they usually expect to be able to get an ambulance when they need it, but that wasn’t the case dozens of times in Saskatchewan in the first weeks of 2023.
According to numbers obtained by the Saskatchewan NDP through a Freedom of Information request, 216 times in the first six weeks of the year, someone in the province called 911 and was told there weren’t any ambulances available.
Those numbers don’t include places like Saskatoon that are served by a private ambulance service.
Vicki Mowat, the NDP’s health critic, said it’s alarming to see those numbers.
“We’ve heard this government try to argue that their investments are making a difference when these numbers show the exact opposite, that we need full-scale ambulance reform in this province, that these actions are only band-aid solutions, and that there is so much needed help,” said Mowat.
NDP Health Critic Vicki Mowat. (980 CJME)
“When people call for an ambulance in this province, they should expect that one is going to show up.”
Mowat said the NDP is seeing the problem across the board in Saskatchewan, meaning it’s not a one-off situation.
There are a number of issues Mowat wants the government to address, including things like a lack of engagement within the industry and communities, understaffing and a lack of equipment, and retention of those who are already working.
Mowat said there are significant mental health challenges through the field that aren’t being addressed.
“So (the government needs to help with) creating a working environment that people want to be part of. It’s the same that we’ve heard throughout the health-care system where people are not feeling appreciated (and) they don’t have manageable workloads,” said Mowat.
Mowat couldn’t say what the total number of calls were in the first six weeks, and couldn’t say how the numbers presented compared with numbers of missed ambulance calls before the pandemic.
The province’s rural and remote health minister, Everett Hindley, said this is obviously a concern for the government.
“We want to make sure that we’re doing better for the people that we represent, and that includes when it comes to ambulance service to ground EMS,” he said.
The minister said the government doesn’t want to have any missed calls.
“We want to make sure that our ambulances are fully staffed and operational and making sure that when a person dials 911 that there’s an ambulance that’s able to answer that call,” he said.
Hindley said the government has been doing things to fix these problems, such as putting up funding for more paramedic positions to stabilize the system, working to identify challenges in ERs so ambulances have an easier time offloading patients, and adding more training seats for primary care paramedics.
“An example of something that’s not going to get us immediate results but we need to take these steps and take them now so we can build capacity,” said Hindley.
Paramedics are also part of the consultation the provincial government is doing in several health-care sectors to consider ways to broaden their scope of practice.
