Winnipeg ambulance response times to life-threatening calls now 6 minutes past target: chief

Winnipeg's fire-paramedic chief says ambulance response times to life-threatening emergencies are six minutes longer than the city's nine-minute response target due to both staff shortages and an insufficient number of actual ambulances.

Chief Christian Schmidt told city council's protection and community services committee Friday that response times have crept up over the years and now approach 15 minutes.

Schmidt said the service is able to send some form of a response within the nine-minute target by sending firefighter-paramedics, with a first responder on the scene in Winnipeg in an average of eight minutes and 47 seconds.

However, the response time for sending ambulances, which are capable of transporting patients to hospital, is getting longer, he said.

"At the end of the day, when there are life-threatening emergencies in our communities across the province, we must have transport-capable resources at the ready to respond … within the timelines that are targeted," Schmidt told the committee.

The issue not just a shortage of paramedics, but of vehicles as well, he said.

"When we have situations where we go into a weekend where we have one or zero physical ambulances available as spares to go out into service, that's very concerning," he said.

"These are things we're talking about with out partners, but there is work to be done."

Schmidt made his comments after police and fire-paramedic officials told the committee they are experiencing some success with a program aimed at reducing ambulance transports of patients who would be better served by a mental health crisis clinician.

During the first nine months of the one-year pilot, more than 2,700 calls were diverted from hospitals, the committee heard.

Schmidt said that is encouraging, but it is not enough to deal with the shortage of paramedics and ambulances.

The fire-paramedic service operates 28 ambulances — with 17 on the street 24 hours a day — as well as four community paramedicine units.

Committee chair Sherri Rollins (Fort Rouge-East Fort Garry) said the city needs 11 more ambulances.

"We're missing equipment. We're missing staffing. It's not that we haven't been doing all that we can to make sure that we're an efficient service," she said, referring to the rapid deployment of cross-trained firefighter-paramedics.

"That unified model has been saving us." 

Solution needed 'to stop the bleed': union

The city reported in January that the number of hours no ambulances were available to transport patients had quadrupled in two years.

The president of the union representing Winnipeg paramedics praised the fire-paramedic chief for speaking out and said it's only a matter of time before someone dies from insufficient care. 

Ryan Woiden, president of the Manitoba Government and General Employees' Union Local 911, said he's been pleading with the province for more resources for years.

"We want to have the politicians on Broadway that make these decisions understand this is not going to be a Band-Aid solution. This is going to need a tourniquet to stop the bleed," he said.

The provincial government, which pays for the ambulance service the city delivers, deferred comment to Manitoba Shared Health.

"We will note that increasing volumes and longer response times are a concern we share with the [Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service]," Shared Health said in a statement that was not attributed to any official.

The provincial health organization said it is trying to reduce the stress on the emergency medical care system by diverting patients who are less sick to urgent care centres. 

The city's contract with the province to deliver ambulance serviced expired four years ago. 

Mayor Brian Bowman said the Progressive Conservative government has promised him a deal was close to completion since Kelvin Goertzen was Manitoba's health minister.

Goertzen has not been health minister since 2018.

"I think the urgency has been there for years," Bowman said. "It's really unacceptable that we don't have a contract finalized during a global pandemic."

Health Minister Audrey Gordon's office said in a statement the contract negotiations are in fact close to completion.

Ambulance response times outside the city have also been called into question. Last weekend, it took 36 minutes for an ambulance to arrive after a fatal skydiving accident was reported in Gimli.