City to speed up 14 paramedic hires as it misses response time targets

Faced with paramedics unable to meet response times for the most life-threatening calls and a record number of ambulance shortages, Ottawa city councillors agreed Thursday to a three-year strategy to boost paramedic hiring — and also called for it to be sped up.

Paramedic chief Pierre Poirier presented the grim numbers and worsening trends to the emergency and protective services committee on Thursday.

Paramedics did not get to calls about chest pain and respiratory problems by the benchmark. Poirier highlighted how patients in sudden cardiac arrest were responded to within six minutes only 48 per cent of the time, when the council-approved percentile is 65 per cent.

They spent the equivalent of seven weeks last year with no ambulances available to send to 911 calls.

Sixty-one paramedic staff are currently on leave for long-term and workplace injuries.

"This situation cannot continue," said Kim Ayotte, general manager of emergency and protective services.

The biggest problem remains the delays at local hospitals, where paramedics can wait hours to transfer patients, Poirier said. It's been going on for many years, but keeps getting worse.

• City seeks to triple new paramedic hires as ambulance demand soars
• 'Level zero' ambulance problem worsens dramatically in Ottawa in 2022

City staff explained the city will need to keep pressuring the province to fix the flow of patients in the health-care system, and implement other strategies to treat and care for patients that might not include a trip to the emergency department. Programs are already long in use in other countries, such as the United Kingdom, that Ottawa might borrow, Poirier said. 

Ottawa's paramedics saw a 23 per cent rise in call volumes from 2021 to 2022.

"I think our demand will continue to expand and if we don't innovate, we'll be crushed by the health-care crisis," Poirier told CBC. "The demand will far outstrip our ability in a conventional sense to continue doing the things that we were doing yesterday."

Call for provincial help

Big changes at the provincial health-care level are critical, but increasing the staff count is also necessary, he said. 

The emergency and protective services committee on Thursday approved hiring 23 more paramedics a year beginning in 2024 to meet the needs of the growing and aging city. The city has determined an additional 17 are required because of the long delays paramedics face at hospitals waiting to transfer patients, and it wants the Ontario government to fully cover those salaries. 

It's not clear that will happen. Health Minister Sylvia Jones's office had earlier told CBC she wanted to continue sharing the cost of paramedics salaries.

Barrhaven West Coun. David Hill moved to hire 14 of the 2024 positions this calendar year instead, and received unanimous approval. The union representing paramedics had called for those hires to take place immediately, rather than waiting, given the strain paramedics are under.

The city has often relied on staff doing overtime, but paramedics are no longer willing to take extra shifts — even at Ottawa Senators games, Poirier said. 

Councillors also agreed that Mayor Mark Sutcliffe and committee chair Coun. Riley Brockington should meet with the CEOs of local hospitals, and that the city should seek a meeting with Jones at the conference of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario this summer.

Brockington pointed out that Ottawa residents are severely affected by paramedics being unable to respond to calls, but so are those in surrounding communities when adjacent counties must send their ambulances to help.

"We need the minister of health to understand the severity of this problem in the City of Ottawa and across Ontario," said Brockington. Only she can hold hospitals accountable to fix the biggest part of a serious problem, he said.