Ambulance wait times getting slower, paramedic and union president calls on Manitoba for resources

Ambulance wait times are getting slower in Winnipeg and paramedic and union president Ryan Woiden is calling on Manitoba for more resources.

“We need help. We need a lot of help here and we need it now.”

The Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service (WFPS) needs seven to 10 more ambulances to help bring soaring wait times below its target of under nine minutes.

Wait times for ambulances have gone up nearly five minutes since 2019 — and it can take around 20 minutes for one to arrive.

Woiden said they’re going from call to call and the workload is leading to burnout.

“This 20 minutes that we see is shocking. It should be concerning. We’re hoping that the people on Broadway have something to say about that and are going to inject something into the city here.”

“We have a lot more part-time requests for people to, you know, go from full-time to part-time. Some people are leaving the profession altogether.”

And in the same time period, waits for firefighter-primary care providers went up slightly from about eight and a half minutes to nearly nine minutes but Woiden says firefighter-PCPs aren’t as specialized as paramedics.

“We certainly have a lot of medications that we can give that are higher-end medications, lifesaving medications if you will, along with, like I said, skills where, like you said, we’re putting a hole in someone’s throat to try to get an airway into their lungs or we, you know, may have to pierce their chest wall to try to, you know, inflate the lung again.”

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Woidon is hoping for more resources at the province’s budget announcement on Tuesday and on Wednesday, Manitoba’s health minister wouldn’t elaborate on whether the province would be providing more ambulances.

However, she did say some good news is on the way for EMS staff and health professionals and people should stay tuned for the budget.

“I also want to highlight that it was our government that reduced the ambulance fees in this province from $500 to $250,” she said.

“We cut it in half. We are adding paramedics to the system, 35 new paramedics. We’ve added seats to the paramedic program at Red River College.”

Meanwhile, Shared Health said it is working with the city to finalize a new EMS agreement with WFPS.

“We continue to work with the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service to find ways to improve patient care and free up ambulances for responding to higher-acuity calls.” said a spokesperson from Shared Health.

Currently, WFPS has 17 ambulances on the road 24/7 along with 11 more that run during peak hours, from noon until midnight as well as some community paramedics.

WFPS Chief Christian Schmidt said even if the unit does get the green light for additional resources, it’s going to take some time to staff up.

“These are, you know, paramedics. There’s a big demand for that profession across the country — this is a real challenge, paramedics are a hot commodity coming out of COVID,”

“So we’ll be competing with other provinces and territories. So that’s something we need to consider as well.”

The city said the rate of medical calls can be attributed to population increase in Winnipeg, an aging population, and all the medical factors that accompany that, increasing calls relating to substance use, and mental health issues in the community and the COVID-19 pandemic also continues to contribute to call volumes for both transport ambulances and community paramedic programming.

— with files from Global’s Rosanna Hempel

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