Critics slam ‘third world’ ambulance response times in northern B.C.

Census data has shown for quite some time that most Canadians live in cities and towns, most hugging our border with the United States.

Not surprisingly, governments direct most of their services to those communities, which leaves less taxpayer money for rural and especially northern areas.

The gap in services has yawned wider in recent years as governments look for ways to trim budgets by shuttering rural hospitals, centralizing trauma care in larger cities and cutting back on ambulance services.

A Canadian Press report focusing on emergency response services in British Columbia highlights the problem in the westernmost province but the same is likely true almost everywhere across the country's interior and northern regions.

Critics say rural and northern B.C. has "third-world" response times for emergency services, CP reports.

B.C. Auditor General John Doyle issued a report last month on the B.C. Ambulance Service's air-ambulance service that found it wasn't doing a good job reviewing its dispatch decisions or dealing with safety concerns. Understaffing has meant lesser skilled paramedics responding to calls, the audit found.

“Air ambulance services have a direct impact on peoples’ lives.” Doyle said in a news release accompanying his report. “We expected to find that the BC Ambulance Service was defining, monitoring and improving standards for its air ambulance service, but that was not the case.”

Rural residents already know they're not getting anything like the service their urban counterparts receive.

CP noted the case of Jackie Inyallie, injured in a car accident near Bear Lake, B.C., four years ago. She suffered a broken arm and punctured lung, injuries that probably would been quickly dealt with at a city hospital.

But it took five hours to get Inyallie to a small northern hospital. Two paramedics-in-training from Mackenzie District Hospital sent to retrieve her were delayed by poor road conditions, CP said. She bled to death before doctors could treat her, her foster mother Doreen Spence told CP.

“There was absolutely no need for Jackie to pass away with what she had,” said Spence.

“We have stretches of highway from Prince George to McBride where there’s no phone service. To get an ambulance there takes forever, where a helicopter, if we had one, or two, or whatever [it would be much faster].”

Alberta's Health Quality Control Council issued a report in January reviewing the provinces emergency medical services and making a number of recommendations to improve services in rural areas and for First Nations communities.

But whether the cash-strapped Alberta government can or would implement them remains to be seen.

CBC News reported in February that co-workers of a Fox Creek, Alta., woman called 911 when she began suffering chest pains but were told no ambulance was available to respond. The symptoms turned out not to be heart-related but the incident jarred everyone.

[ Related: Ambulance didn't come for northern Alberta heart attack call ]

Last year, a 70-year-old woman living in Hudson's Hope, B.C., who did suffer a heart attack died after waiting more than an hour for an ambulance to arrive from 65 kilometres away.

After her foster-daughter's death, Doreen Spence and her husband Brian began to work with Northern B.C. H.E.R.O.S, which wants to fill the gap in air-ambulance service through a non-profit alternative using helicopters.

B.C. has one fixed-wing air ambulance jet based in Prince George, which is used to take patients to Vancouver for trauma care, CP reported.

Les Fisher, chief operating officer for the provincial ambulance service, said it's impractical and costly to dot ambulance helicopters throughout the north.

“It would get them to a community hospital where they still don’t have the services that the patient needs,” Fisher told CP, pointing out choppers can't reach centralized trauma centres in Vancouver and Victoria without refueling. “So all it does is add extra expense to the system without having any outcome benefit to the patient.”

[ Related: Woman dies waiting for ambulance in Northern B.C. ]

Hans Dysarsz, who started a non-profit air-ambulance service in Alberta three decades ago, said he'd complained to the auditor general before the recent report about the government service's lack of accountability.

"We have third-world response times here," he said.

CP noted that a 2002 study using statistics from the B.C. Coroners Service found the pre-hospital trauma-related death rate in northern B.C. was about six time higher than in the Lower Mainland — 75 per cent versus 12 per cent.

Fisher said his service is doing the best it can under the current setup.