Ottawa councillor calls Prescott-Russell ambulance plan 'despicable'
An Ottawa city councillor is calling the latest move from a rural municipality in a long-simmering dispute over ambulance services, "despicable," "disappointing," and "irresponsible."
The municipality of Prescott-Russell announced changes Wednesday that will mean its paramedics and ambulances spend less time answering calls outside its borders, particularly from Ottawa.
The community's council directed its emergency services department to make ambulances that have dropped off a patient outside that municipality unavailable to take another call until they've returned to their home base.
Currently, ambulances can be dispatched to another call before they return to their community, if they are the closest available unit.
Ottawa Coun. Scott Moffatt said the move risks patient safety.
"To all of a sudden suggest that you are going to keep driving just to get back to within your own borders is incredibly disappointing and it's really despicable you would take such a stance, that puts lives at risk," he said.
Communities bordering the City of Ottawa have long complained the current ambulance dispatch system of sending the closest ambulance to a call means they're spending too much time and money responding to calls in Ottawa.
They say Ottawa isn't funding its own paramedic service sufficiently, and surrounding municipalities are being forced to bear the burden as a result.
Prescott-Russell said it wouldn't make changes for 60 days to give time for a solution to be worked out.
No surprise
Michel Chrétien, director of emergency services with Prescott-Russell, said they want to force a discussion on the issue, because right now their ambulance service is being stretched.
"We're saying to the ministry we have a right to manage our fleet," he said. "I am really concerned that something will happen one day in our community where all of our resources will be somewhere else."
Chrétien said this has been a long-time coming and the municipality wants the ministry of health and long-term care to step in. He said there need to be standards to force a community to have adequate service and not to overly rely on neighbours.
He said after two years of complaining about the issue they needed to take a stand.
"I don't think this will be a surprise to anybody. We have been leaning that way for a long time."
The municipality also said they would help in urgent situations, but not on an everyday basis as they are now.
Moffatt said patients, potentially in life-threatening situations, are going to be put at risk if this move goes ahead.
"To use potential patients, to use paramedics as a pawn between those two municipalities is irresponsible," he said.
Emergency services workers in Prescott-Russell, which lies east of Ottawa, have said the number of outside calls for paramedic service has risen dramatically since 2016.
The City of Ottawa pulled out of a tentative agreement with neighbouring municipalities in August that would have seen outside paramedics responding only to calls involving cardiac arrest or an unconscious patient.
Ottawa hired 12 new paramedics in 2016 and was in the process of training 24 more at its last update in September 2017.
