Ambulance crews were quicker to respond to emergencies in 2009, however city hall cautioned against reading too much into the numbers.
As part of the 2009 year-end report presented to council on Monday, in-city ambulance response times dropped to 9:06, 90 per cent of the time, close to the nine-minute target, and an improvement over 2008 when response times were 11:40.
Fire response times averaged 9:34 in 2009, 10 seconds slower than 2008.
City manager Bill Holtby cautioned council against attributing the EMS improvement to regionalization that came into effect last year. Under regionalization, St. Albert operates two ambulances 24/7; if those ambulances are in use, EMS is dispatched from outside the city.
Holtby said there was no way to track response times of ambulances coming from outside St. Albert.
“We don’t yet have a clear tracking of all those calls,” he said. “[This] is the only statistic we have for the City of St. Albert at this time.”
St. Albert fire Chief Ray Richards attributed part of the appearance of EMS improvements to non-emergency calls being removed from the statistics. The times also reflect technological improvements for dispatchers.
Numbers should improve for the fire department thanks to the opening of fire station No. 3, and a staff that’s now adjusted to response protocol.
However, Richards said the numbers only paint part of the current emergency response situation.
“In our industry, we have a lot of benchmarks to use,” said Richards. “Numbers are just numbers, so how you crunch them makes a difference.”
Mayor Nolan Crouse said he was still cautious about reading too much into the in-city response times, but still wondered if and when St. Albert will see complete response times for ambulances.
“The one statistic that’s missing is when an ambulance responds to St. Albert. We don’t know how long it takes,” said Crouse. “We want to know how long people are waiting for an ambulance in this city.”
Alberta Health Services spokeswoman Sheila Rougeau said the government is currently unable to release all EMS response statistics because not all municipalities are on the new central dispatch system. She suggested those numbers could become available in the future.
Although Richards said he liked the improvement in times, he also conceded there was room for improvement.
“Are we happy with it? No, we can do better and we will do better.”
