Eli El-Chantiry pushing city to expedite paramedic hiring
On a daily basis there are not enough ambulances to respond to 911 calls
A rural city councillor is calling for Ottawa to speed up the hiring of two dozen paramedics to address an ambulance shortage that some are calling a crisis.
I don't want to wait for someone to lose his life because of this.- Coun. Eli El-Chantiry
"I don't want to wait for someone to lose his life because of this," said Coun. Eli El-Chantiry, who represents Ottawa on the Rural Ontario Municipal Association.
"Then we're going to be faced with another inquiry. Right now we are trying to fix the problem but we need to expedite that."
On a daily basis there are not enough ambulances to respond to 911 calls, the city's head of emergency services confirmed.
Anthony Di Monte said Ottawa paramedics are hitting "level zero" daily and sometimes multiple times a day.
The message dispatched to hospitals means there isn't a single city ambulance available to respond to an emergency, he explained. Until an ambulance is available or brought in from neighbouring municipalities, paramedics are sent to the scene in other vehicles, or police and firefighters respond in some cases.
The city hasn't experienced this many level zero alerts since 2004, according to Di Monte.
Back then a coroner's inquest looked into the death of Greely resident Alice Martin, who died of a heart failure, and found that paramedics were not responding to patients fast enough.
Fast forward 12 years later and the issue is making the news again.
The Professional Paramedic Association of Ottawa said it worries the number of paramedics the city plans to hire in 2017 may not be enough to meet the demand, since the calculations are based on the volume of calls from 2015.
Daily problem
The city plans to hire 24 new paramedics in June 2017 to catch up and meet the growing demand. But El-Chanitry and the paramedic association want the hiring to start immediately, not six months from now.
"The demand exists today," said Darryl Wilton, president of the Professional Paramedic Association of Ottawa.
If there's no ambulances available to respond to emergency calls that should be alarming to the entire community.- Darryl Wilton, paramedic association president
"If there's no ambulances available to respond to emergency calls that should be alarming to the entire community ... It puts every paramedic on edge because most of the paramedics live in the community, we work in the community and we know that somebody who needs medical care will not be receiving treatment at that time."
The city has been asked to expedite the process by selecting new hires from an existing list of candidates from the last round of hiring who are done school, rather than waiting for the next class to graduate in the spring.
Wilton said it can take on average four months for new paramedics fresh out of school to go through training and orientation before they start responding to 911 calls.
The city did not provide an interview. A statement suggests they are keeping with the original plan.
"Ottawa Paramedic Service will be working with their internal partners to initiate the hiring process in anticipation of new college graduates who will complete the Ministry of Health certification exam in the spring of 2017," wrote the acting chief of the Ottawa Paramedic Service, Peter Kelly, in an emailed statement.
Health minister working closely with Ottawa
Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins said the province is also working closely with the city.
The ministry released a damning report earlier this month that found there's a 30-minute wait period before paramedics are available for another call after discharging patients at a hospital.
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"We are concerned," said Hoskins. "That's an anomaly compared to other jurisdictions we looked at."
He added that the issue is a multi-layered and that plans are underway to roll out a better dispatch system to improve Ottawa's outcomes over the next year.
Moving forward, El-Chantiry said the public also needs to be educated on when to call 911.
The city is receiving an increase in false calls, he says. For example, people witnessing a car crash and calling for paramedics when the driver is not injured.
