Ottawa’s paramedic chief says the six-hour wait for an ambulance a woman faced last week was the result of an unusually high number of calls and long delays at the hospital, but acknowledges the service is experiencing more incidents where there are no ambulances to dispatch .
Elaine Deschenes’ family called 911 around 5 p.m. on July 21 after she fell and broke her hip in the driveway. She had to wait six hours before paramedics from Cornwall took her to hospital.
Pierre Poirier, the chief of paramedics in Ottawa, said there was “almost continuous” zero from 5 p.m. that day until after midnight — meaning there was no ambulance to be dispatched.
“There have been several instances where the crew that was assigned to that residence was diverted to a higher priority call. It’s kind of, quite frankly, an expression of the health care crisis that we’re in,” Poirier said.
“We are always dismayed when we are unable to provide the service as timely as possible.”
There were 10 other calls with a similar lower priority, or code 3, in the queue while Deschenes was waiting, Poirier said, and the “level zero” has a cascading effect on how ambulances are dispatched.
This year will be unprecedented in terms of the number of zero-level events.- Pierre Poirier, Ottawa Paramedic Service
Poirier said on July 21 the 40 or so teams that had been employed would have been enough to meet normal demand, but there had been “exceptional” demand and delays leaving patients in hospital.
He said there were about 500 calls that day, 20 percent more than normal about three months ago, and in about 10 percent of cases paramedics were tied up at the hospital for more than three hours.
Police said they took a shooting victim with non-life-threatening injuries to a hospital that night after officers “were advised there was no ambulance.”
Poirier said the call was a high priority and an ambulance arrived at the scene three minutes after police left with the patient. He said the patient was supposed to be taken to the Ottawa Hospital campus trauma center but was taken to the wrong facility.
“The police made a choice to transport, which we never condone. We do not support this in any way,” he said.
In a statement, police said the victim was transported to the nearest hospital, which would be the Ottawa General Hospital Campus according to Google Maps.
Police said they are discussing the call with paramedics and it is the only recent incident they are aware of.
‘Unprecedented’ zero level in 2022
Ottawa has already reached more than 750 “level zero” cases in the first seven months of 2022 — as many as the service had in all of 2021.
“This year will be unprecedented in terms of the number of level zero events and the time spent at level zero,” Poirier said.
When it reaches a level of zero, the service looks at whether patients are worse off when en route to hospital than at the time of the initial call.
Poirier said it is “extremely rare” for a patient to be a higher priority and there have been no deaths related to delays this year.
“The system still works. It’s in a tough spot, but it’s still working,” he said.
Six hours after the 911 call, an ambulance arrived and paramedics outside Ottawa prepared a stretcher to transport Elaine Deschenes to the hospital. (Submitted by Cathy Deschenes)
He said the service is not accepting the status quo and is working with local hospitals, including recruiting more paramedics and placing paramedics in emergency rooms to help admit patients and get ambulance crews back on the road.
Queensway Carleton Hospital said it paired this paramedic with a dedicated nurse 12 hours a day.
That hospital said that with ongoing staffing challenges and an overcapacity emergency department, discharge times ranged between 60 and 90 minutes instead of the 30-minute target.
The Ottawa General Hospital campus and Montfort Hospital also have paramedics, and a similar project is in development for the Civic campus, Poirier said.
Montfort said he is optimistic the program will improve discharge times. The Ottawa hospital did not respond by deadline.
Ontario’s Ministry of Health said in a statement Friday that it has increased funding for specialist staff to see patients at a hospital next year as part of a response to ambulance availability issues in eastern Ontario.
The ministry said it is also working to address issues with hospital flow, space constraints, hospital culture and access to non-urgent care alternatives.
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