Toronto is seeking on order to increase the number of paramedics on duty during the strike, after an analysis showed ambulance response times have “slipped” during the five-week labour disruption.
Bruce Farr, Chief of Toronto EMS, said Friday that after reviewing 26,000 911 calls over the last month, the time taken to arrive at a life-threatening emergency has climbed by 53 seconds.
Prior to the strike, Toronto ambulances averaged a response time of 8 minutes and 18 seconds. Since the strike, that has jumped to 9 minutes and 11 seconds.
The “gold standard” for EMS to get to a top priority call is 8 minutes 59 seconds.
"When we look at our life-threatening calls… we want to ensure our response to those calls and we will be slower in some of the lower priority calls. As we look at the 53 seconds and apply that to some of our highest priority calls, it’s inappropriate as far as I’m concerned and now is the time to take steps to correct that," Chief Farr said. "This has been a very long strike and we’ve been analyzing the 26,000 calls that we’ve done since the beginning of the strike and after that review we’ve seen an increase in our response time of about 53 seconds. And that’s enough for me to ensure public safety. And we want to act now to ensure that we make an application to the board."
The city has requested that the Ontario Labour Relations Board review Toronto’s essential services agreement with its EMS workers.
Mayor David Miller said any changes to coverage levels would be permanent.
"What it does mean is we are asking the labour board to change the essential services agreement in, I think, a significant way," he said. "What the result of this will hopefully be is an essential services agreement that provides for significantly more coverage, which would be the standard in the future, were there ever another strike.
Currently, paramedics and dispatchers are legally required to maintain 75% staffing, even with the strike, although during Pride week, the level was kept at 100%.
The increased staffing would allow the city up the number of ambulances on the road, Chief Farr said, as well as deploy more people to "special teams" like the marine unit and on scene at public events.
For instance the city is seeking to increase by 22 the number of ambulances roving on a weekday over a 24-hour period and by 27 the number roaming on a weekend over the same timeframe.
That would mean there were be 300 paramedics on duty on a weekday, up from 225 currently and 250 working on a weekend, up from 175 under the current essential services arrangement.
While that brings it close to 100% coverage, Chief Farr said Toronto EMS, although those levels would still be about 100 personnel shy of full staffing.
Chief Farr said the decision to seek the ruling from the labour board came from an analysis of overall response times and insisted it was not related to an incident on June 25 where a man died of apparent cardiac arrest when paramedics took up to 45 minutes to show up because they were waiting outside to enter with police.
He said it was also unrelated to a Toronto Island resident who died of cardiac arrest after collapsing in front of his home, because fire and the island EMS unit were on scene in about seven minutes.
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