Hastings EMS response time not up to par

Chief of Hastings Quinte Emergency Medical Services Doug Socha said adding an extra ambulance seven days per week will help improve their response time. Photo by Sean Macey.

Sean Macey

Twenty-one minutes doesn’t sound like a long time, but for people in the northern parts of Hastings County that’s how long it can take to get emergency medical help.

That’s more than double the average according to Ontario’s Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care.

Doug Socha, chief of the Hastings Quinte Emergency Medical Services, said there aren’t enough resources to serve the area.

“If we had additional resources around where the busier calls are [Belleville], hopefully we’re able to meet that demand and keep the local resources in Madoc, Bancroft and Picton,” Socha said.

“It’s a combination of things, the population is getting older unfortunately, and as we get older we access the healthcare system, and a lot of that is done through the paramedic service,” he said.

Socha said when there’s a high number of calls in Belleville they pull resources from Bancroft and Madoc. Therefore getting back to the more rural areas is taking more time.

The solution, he says, is adding another ambulance in Belleville seven days a week, 12 hours a day.

Keeping the ambulances where they belong would make a big difference. Socha said when the resources aren’t being used elsewhere, the average response time in Bancroft is only five minutes and 31 seconds.

Serious calls involving heart attacks or death aren’t just the responsibility of the EMS. In those cases fire and police will also be dispatched, cutting down the response time greatly.

He said another ambulance, along with the appropriate up staffing would cost around $700, 000 per year. However, with the current funding model the province would pay half the cost. With Hastings County responsible for the other half. It’s something Socha said is on the agenda for the county’s 2013 budget meeting.

He said they’ve tried a lot of different things to improve response times, such as adding staff for the hours with the highest call volumes.