Ontario will be pitching in $31,409,881 for land ambulances in Simcoe County this year, which is about $2 million more than last year.
A joint news release from Simcoe County MPPs promised a six per cent increase to the land ambulance funding for the year, and also $245,280 in funding for dedicated offload nurses.
Last year, the county received $1,263,091 for the offload nurses program.
The dedicated offload nurses program was created to hire nurses and other health professionals whose job it is to offload ambulance patients in hospital emergency departments. Ambulances and the paramedics on them have to wait until a patient is transferred to the hospital's emergency department before responding to any more 911 calls.
This funding program is the provincial government's answer to increasing offload times in Ontario, which peaked in October 2022 with an average of around 31 minutes province-wide.
Data obtained from Ontario Health through freedom-of-information requests shows the average had come down to about 23 minutes by May 2024. The median offload time in May in the province is 14 minutes. More recent data was not available.
The news release from MPPs Doug Downey (Barrie-Springwater-Oro-Medonte), Jill Dunlop (Simcoe-North), Andrea Khanjin (Barrie-Innisfil), Caroline Mulroney (York-Simcoe) and Brian Saunderson (Simcoe-Grey) notes a reduction in offload times of "more than 50 per cent" since October 2022, "as a result of this investment and the dedication of health-care professionals."
“Quick response times are critical in emergency medical services, and every second counts when it comes to responding to emergencies to save lives,” said Khanjin. “Our government's land ambulance investment ... will connect people to emergency care faster and increase the availability of ambulances in our region, along with the ... program to hire more nurses and other eligible health professionals dedicated to offloading ambulance patients in hospital emergency departments.”
The province also notes the implementation of the new medical priority dispatch system is over a year ahead of schedule. The system is designed to improve prioritization and triage of emergency medical calls and to dispatch paramedics sooner.
This investment will "help residents of Bradford receive the care they need faster," said Mulroney.
“Reducing offload times by 50 (per cent) will allow paramedics to rapidly respond to residents in need and get them back on the road for their next urgent call," she said.
The medical priority system is already in place in Mississauga, Kenora, Thunder Bay, Ottawa and Renfrew, with plans to "accelerate" the installation at the remaining 15 dispatch sites in the province.
