More ambulances good news for South Fraser region



Changes to the ambulance service, announced on Feb. 5 by the B.C. Emergency Health Services, should prove beneficial to residents in Surrey and Delta.
A total of eight new ambulances are being added, and 34 paramedics are being hired. Three of the eight new ambulances will be based in Surrey, and none of them will be based in Vancouver. The city of Vancouver, with its high concentration of health institutions, has long been well-served by the ambulance service. The BCEHS has recognized that it is the fast-growing regions around the city that need help the most.
Thus Langley and Abbotsford will also get two new ambulances each, while the North Shore will get the eighth one. Meanwhile, in the Tri-City area, new paramedics will be hired.
This is a significant recognition that, in fast-growing areas (mostly within Fraser Health Authority), thee level of service provided isn’t up to the highest standards. BCEHS is targeting that in 75 per cent of calls for service, an ambulance will arrive in under nine minutes.
BCEHS executive vice-president Linda Lupini said that new ambulances and more staff are only part of the answer to improving response times. BCEHS is looking at a number of ways to speed up response times. Among the most important is to reduce the amount of time paramedics wait in hospital emergency rooms to hand over incoming patients.
For these waiting times to be reduced, hospitals, particularly in the FHA, need to make reforms to how they deal with patients in the emergency departments. This will not be easy. Wait times in the busiest FHA hospitals often stretch out for many hours.
Lupini also says a number of calls that are currently made to the ambulance service can be redirected, with patients dealing with a physician over the phone, or paramedics seeing and treating patients without taking them to the hospital.
Local fire departments have been complaining about the long wait times for ambulances, as firefighters who are called to medical distress calls must wait until the ambulance arrives. This has the potential to tie up firefighters when they are needed elsewhere.
Surrey fire chief Len Garis is optimistic about the changes, saying he believes they will make the system more efficient.
The changes could go further, but there isn’t likely the political will to do so. Firefighters are first responders and have taken on that role for many years. However, they are not paramedics and their duties when arriving on scene are primarily to stabilize patients.
Municipalities could agree to have firefighters trained as paramedics and thus assume more of the costs for health care, which is a provincial responsibility. Or conversely, the ambulance service could expand even further and actually take over as first responders.
Neither move is particularly likely, given that municipalities are reluctant to spend more of their budgets on health care. The province, meanwhile, has greatly benefited from the effective download of some of its health care responsibilities to local taxpayers.
No matter if there are more significant changes in the works or not, the additional ambulances and paramedics coming to the fastest-growing areas of B.C. will be busy from the moment they arrive. The population of Surrey, Langley, Abbotsford and other surrounding areas will keep growing, and people who move there need to have timely access to medical services.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bad day at Black Press

Image
News today that Black Press has voluntarily entered creditor protection and could be sold to a three-way partnership is the latest in a long string of bad news stories for community newspapers. David Black, longtime owner and founder of Black Press, is out of the newspaper business after more than 50 years. It has been a sad day for me. I have spent the past 46 years involved with the community press, mostly as a reporter and editor. I was a Black Press editor for 16 years with The Langley Times, retiring from full-time work in 2015. I am particularly saddened when I think of the many great people I worked with at various newspapers, most of them now owned by Black Press. Some still work there, some have retired, some have left this world behind. Community newspapers have been struggling to find an arrangement that works for them, as businesses, and for their readers, for the better part of 20 years. This became a particular challenge when smart phones, notably the iPhone, made their a...
Read more

Na Tigie Jawara - she was a rock to many in Kabala, Sierra Leone

Image
Bonnie and I paused for a photo with Robert and Na Tigie Jawara when we visited their home in Kabala, Sierra Leone in December, 2013. Their granddaughter Tigos, who has just turned six, is with them. Students at Kabala Christian School enjoy the shade under a giant mango tree on their school grounds in Kabala, Sierra Leone. Update: The Jawara's three children who live outside Sierra Leone (two attend university in The Gambia, and one is working in South Korea) are now on their way back home for their mother's funeral, which will take place Sunday. Na Tigie's death has had a huge impact on many people there, as she was well-known in so many circles and well-loved by many. Just under three years ago, my wife Bonnie and I had the privilege of travelling to Sierra Leone and Ghana in West Africa. Our daughter Christina (Chrissy) first went to Sierra Leone in 2008, when she was in Grade 12 at Fraser Valley Christian high school in Surrey. She spent most of he...
Read more

Capital parcel tax biggest culprit in massive Surrey tax increase

Image
Property taxes in Surrey jumped by far more than the 2.9 per cent claimed by Mayor Doug McCallum. The biggest culprit is the capital parcel tax, which jumped by 200 per cent for every single property in the city. This is steep - and regressive. Many Surrey residents are upset about the boost in their property taxes. Some say they have gone up 15 to 20 per cent - a far cry from Mayor Doug McCallum’s claim that they were only boosted a modest 2.9 per cent. Property taxes are complex although Surrey, to its credit, breaks down the portion collected for its operations quite specifically. Not all municipalities do so. The Surrey property tax bill also includes a significant amount for schools, as well as small amounts for B.C. Assessment Authority, Metro Vancouver and TransLink. There is no doubt that McCallum’s claim was misleading, right from the moment council adopted its 2021 budget. A 200 per cent increase in the parcel tax, from $100 to $300, ensured that everyone’s taxes would rise f...
Read more