Limited data on St. Albert’s ambulance response times is now available publicly through Alberta Health Services (AHS) website, something the mayor says is a positive sign.
Up until February the province had not disclosed any data on the response times of St. Albert’s two full-time ambulances and its peak-hour ambulance, which originates from Morinville and is based at the Sturgeon Community Hospital. AHS released statistics for all ambulances in February.
Some of that information is now available at http://www.albertahealthservices.ca/Data/ahs-data-ems-event-st-albert.pdf
The information is presented as two charts — one showing ‘event volumes,’ or the different types of activities on a monthly basis in which St. Albert’s ambulances have been involved. The available data only runs up until February, when the Gazette received information from AHS.
According to the chart, St. Albert EMS crews responded to approximately 550 events in February, with more than half of those involving patient transfers. Slightly more than 100 were emergency calls while fewer than 100 were non-emergency calls.
The second chart, which also only contains data up to February, shows response times for life-threatening calls, coded either Delta or Echo. The chart appears to show what the Gazette printed in February – that the median response time, in which half of calls take longer and half take less time, was approximately seven minutes. Ambulances were responding to 90 per cent of calls within 13 minutes.
Those numbers are a significant improvement over last May when crews were responding to 90 per cent of calls within 18 minutes. That number dropped to approximately 12 minutes in June before shooting back up to 16 minutes in August. Every month since, with the exception of February 2012, has seen the 90th percentile average time drop. At its lowest in January of this year, the time was slightly less than 10 minutes before surging back up in February.
The median response time has stayed relatively steady at seven minutes since April of 2011.
Mayor Nolan Crouse, who has criticized AHS for sluggish response times, said he was happy the data was finally posted publicly.
“The data itself is showing a decline in the 90 per cent. That was certainly what the data shows,” Crouse said. “That was the good news.”
But Crouse noted the upward ticks in response times as well.
“What I’m concerned about is St. Albert. Certainly the last month it shows a pop-up,” he said.
St. Albert Fire Services chief Ray Richards did not return phone calls requesting comment.
