The province of Nova Scotia has announced Emergency Health Services will hire 100 more transport operators across the province, more than doubling the amount of operators currently working.
Transport operators are non-paramedic staff who handle routine patient transfers.
In a release Wednesday, the province said the new staff will help reduce pressure on the ambulance system and allow paramedics to focus on responding to emergency calls.
“We recognize the pressure the Emergency Health Services system is under and how this impacts patients, paramedics and the delivery of emergency care,” said Michelle Thompson, Minister of Health and Wellness, in the release.
“Reducing our reliance on ambulances to transport non-critical or non-urgent patients was a recommendation of the 2019 Fitch Report and will mean more ambulances will be available to respond to emergencies.”
The Fitch Report, a 118-page document publicly released last year looking into the state of emergency services and ambulance wait times, said a significant amount of ambulance time is exhausted by unproductive non-emergency activities.
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Wednesday’s release said there are currently 80 transport operators and the new hires will bring that number to 180.
The operators support EHS’s medical transport service — which is for low-risk patients who do not require medical care during transport between hospital facilities, or between their home and hospital — and patient transfer units, which transfers patients who are not critical or urgent between health-care facilities.
“Both types of transfer services use specifically designed vehicles staffed by transport operators who have training in first aid, vehicle operations and EHS equipment and have direct radio access to the EHS Medical Communications Centre,” the release said.
According to the province, EHS responded to 182,000 calls in 2021, which is an average of 500 per day. About 30 per cent did not require medical care during transport.
The province has previously announced it is adding more vehicles to its patient transfer service and hiring more non-paramedic drivers to free up health-care workers.
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