Red Deer Mayor Tara Veer gave an emotional plea for support of the local EMS dispatch service. The mayor is concerned about the changes to move the local EMS dispatch service to a provincial communication centre will cost lives.

By January 4th, 2021,  Alberta Health Services intends to move the province onto an integrated municipal ambulance dispatch service to consolidate down to three ambulance communications centres. The communication centres will be located in Peace River, Edmonton, and Calgary. The change has been recommended in an effort to save the province $5 million.

However, the mayor believes Red Deer’s current integrated fire and emergency ambulance service performs better than AHS’s suggested model.

“Under AHS, we will not know the number of ambulances available in our city and region. Therefore, we will not know when to dispatch fire unit to respond to a call quicker in the interest of public safety and patient outcomes. Delays that will come without a doubt from consolidated AHS dispatch are unnecessary and dangerous in life and death situations,” said Veer.

In Red Deer, firefighters are cross-trained as paramedics and respond to 40 per cent of medical calls in the city. Veer believes the integrated service currently offered allows for better collaboration in the communication rooms.

“For large incidences that require an urgent response, all the dispatch crews are communicating in the room and jointly coordinated. This provides for a faster, more efficient timely response and when technology fails, dispatchers can turn and talk to each other. Having integrated dispatchers in the same room, without question saves time and saves lives,” said Veer.

City of Red Deer Mayor speaks about Red Deer's integrated fire and emergency ambulance service at the Emergency Services Headquarters on September 21, 2020.

On average, Red Deer's current dispatch service responds in 71 seconds. The AHS communication standard has a 90 second response time, but in Edmonton, the dispatch averaged 92 seconds last quarter.

Although the difference is in seconds, Veer says those seconds matter during an emergent event.

“There's some health incidences where 18 to 20 seconds might be less of a challenge. There are other instances, say in a cardiac event, in a stroke situation, in an accident, in major events like we've had in our community recently, where seconds matter and in the chain of survival in terms of patient outcomes,  those seconds matter, and that's why it's so absolutely critical,” said Veer.

Since AHS made the announcement on August 4th, Veer called the Minister of Health, Tyler Shandro to host a meeting to discuss consolidation with the affected municipalities but since then, it has been difficult to find a meeting date. On Thursday, September 24th Veer will meet with Shandro to discuss the consolidation.

So far, local communities that have garnered their support for the City with letters of record are the City and County of Lacombe, the town of Blackfalds, the town of Delburne, the town of Penhold, and the town of Eckville. Veer expects more letters to come in before her meeting with the Minister of Health.

Additionally, she implored the public to write letters to their local MLA to describe their positive experiences with dispatch.

“If you are concerned about the proposed changes to emergency ambulance dispatch, please contact your local MLA, the Minister of Health, and the Premier of Alberta with your thoughts. We all know that in government plans that sometimes look reasonable on paper do not always translate to the interest of the people that we serve. This is a mistake,” said Veer.