A move by the Province to consolidate EMS 911 dispatch services is not going over well locally.

Foothills County Reeve Suzanne Oel is also Chair of the Foothills Regional Emergency Services Commission, which includes 25 municipalities.

She says they're making the same arguments they have for years.

"In our opinion, and you've heard us quite vocal on this in the past, we feel that EMS dispatch should be kept in the same 911 centre where the fire (department) is being dispatched, it just makes more sense," she says. "Breaking up that 911 call, it adds time, delays getting service to the patient, there's problems with the service response coordination, there's poor area familiarization, there's ambulance response delays, gaps in coverage and actually some issues with accountability and that standards are not being met."

She says one of the concerns they have is that when a medical call comes in it has to be transferred to another local and if the fire department is needed the call has to go back to the dispatch centre again to send out the fire department creating a delay.

Oel says they had done an extensive review of the last ten years since losing their dispatch to support their request to have the 911 centre returned, including background information and realistic cost effective solutions.

She disputes the Province's claim the consolidation will save $6 million.

Oel argues there could be better value by supporting existing competent 911 centres getting better service and eliminating costly duplication.

She says they've brought this up with local MLAs to no avail.

"Many times, we thought they were supportive so we're a bit surprised with this announcement, so I look forward to checking in with them here probably very shortly," she says. "Many of our members of the commission have also brought it up with their MLAs and we had been in a process of sharing not only our report that we produced, we shared that report with the Red Tape Reduction and with the Minister of Health, this was in March of this year and we also were sharing information with the Rural Municipalities of Alberta, and then the world changed, so we were on track to be able to share a significant amount of information,
although we did share our report we were not able to continue with our public efforts."

Oel says if this wasn't so important to saving lives and making things more effective, they wouldn't have continued their efforts for so many years.

 

Send us your news tips, story ideas and comments at news@highriveronline.com