Emergency services under stress, city councillors told

Greater Sudbury may need to add more ambulances, city councillors were told this week, as the number of calls for service continues to rise.

Fire services are also under pressure, said Tim Beadman, the city's chief of fire and paramedic services, and reviews are underway to look for ways to ease the demand.

On the ambulance side, Beadman says after making progress reducing the length of time ambulances spend waiting in hospital to unload patients, wait times are getting longer. In 2013, ambulances lost 19.2 per cent of their time waiting for patients to be unloaded, compared to an Ontario average of 8.7 per cent.

When combined with such factors as the city's aging population and Greater Sudbury's sparsely populated layout, ambulance service “is at capacity,” he said.

“We're not in crisis,” Beadman said, but they will have to find ways to address chronic issues.

They include a small number of patients who have “multiple, multiple” calls for service. Finding them an alternative to ambulance is one way to ease the stress on the system, he said.

The city is also looking at integrating emergency dispatch, so the same operator would handle the call whether it's a patient, police or fire emergency. That move could save as much as $1 million a year.

On the fire side, Beadman said living in a city serviced by a mix of full-time and volunteer firefights presents unique challenges. Out of a total of a $34.8-million budget for emergency services, about $24 million is spent on firefighters. And unlike ambulance and paramedics, the province doesn't share in the costs of fire services. That means 99 per cent of the fire budget comes from tax levy.

Areas of the city covered by volunteer firefighters pay a lower tax rate, but Beadman says when they get a call, they don't limit their response according to where the emergency is.

"For service delivery, we are one city, one service," he said.

They are working on a more efficient way of calling out firefighters, he said. For volunteer forces, they're not sure who will be available when an emergency strikes, so they have to cast a wide net.

"There are times when we have too many firefighters, and others when we have too few," Beadman said.

With an annual capital spending deficit of about $1 million, they are looking for ways to save money and are currently reviewing the way city's 24 fire stations operate to see if there are ways they can save money.

Quick facts:
Number of emergency calls in 2014:
40,000 calls for paramedics
5,000 calls for fire department