It was only a matter of time..Emergency Medical Services personnel have been raising the alarm bells for years about a crisis with ambulance services in Alberta..We have written a number of stories and columns exposing the extended and growing wait times for ambulance services across the province. .The Health Sciences Association of Alberta has been posting the daily red alerts in Alberta cities as areas find themselves with no ambulance services available..Alberta Health Services (AHS) can't pretend nobody warned them..Now, a woman in her 80s died while waiting more than half-an-hour for ambulance services in Calgary after a dog attack. She was a mere four-km from the largest hospital in Alberta. According to Google maps, it would have taken less than 10 minutes to drive her to the hospital in a car. An ambulance presumably would be faster.. Distance from dying woman to hospital .In speaking to a paramedic in Calgary familiar with the incident, he was told this death would almost certainly have been prevented had there been timely, trained medical intervention. Bystanders waited helplessly as a woman slowly faded away in front of them as the minutes ticked by since calling 911..The problems plaguing Alberta’s emergency medical services under AHS management are many. A likely contributing factor to the recent death of the woman in Capitol Hill Calgary was the usage of paramedics for hallway care in hospitals..At any given time in a large Alberta hospital, you will see half a dozen or more ambulances parked in and around the emergency area. If you go into the hospital, you will see upwards of a dozen or more paramedics hanging around caring for non-critical patients in the hallways of the facility. They are not allowed to leave until hospital staff sign off on the patient. Hospital staff find it easier upon themselves not to sign off quickly so they can dump the care upon the paramedics. This leaves the paramedics stranded while cities run out of available ambulances..Prior to 2009, ambulance service was within the domain of the municipalities and things ran smoothly. Then Premier Ed Stelmach centralized ambulance service within the provincial health services. With AHS now running the show, union interests dominate patient needs. They don’t want to raise the ire of the nurses union by taking away the hallway care of paramedics, so they look the other way despite the paramedics’ union calling foul for years. The bigger union wins in the end while citizens pay the ultimate price..Had paramedics been allowed to leave Foothills hospital last Sunday, they likely would have arrived to the scene where the senior was dying and gotten her to advanced care in time to save her life. Instead, they sat helplessly in a hospital watching patients with non-life-threatening conditions..The dispatch service can carry some blame here as well. If a person calls 911, the operator is not allowed to tell the caller how long it will be until services arrive. This has been a problem all over the system. A case in Okotoks led to firefighters staying on the scene of a serious injury waiting for nearly an hour for an ambulance. Had emergency services simply told the firefighters how long it would be, they could have transferred the patient themselves. Instead, a person’s life was put at risk and trained firefighters were unavailable to respond to any fires that may break out. .New AHS releases on the incident now claim that the episode was considered non-life threatening when it was called into 911 thus only police were dispatched. .The neighbor who called 911 also spoke in interviews of offering last comforts to the victim as she died. Are we to believe that they felt medical care wasn't necessary when they called for help? The woman was mauled to death by three dogs. The need for medical care was likely pretty self-evident. Something doesn't add up here and something clearly went wrong. .Time is everything in emergencies whether medical or with fires. The longer one waits for trained responders, the higher the chance of a negative outcome..Had the bystanders attending to the dying senior known it would take longer than a half an hour to get an ambulance, they may have chosen to drive the woman themselves. With enough fit people, they could have carried her to the emergency room in less than half an hour from that location..Hell, they would have been better off calling her an Uber. At least ride-sharing apps let you know how far the car is from you..All we can do now is hope this tragedy acts as a wake up call. AHS ignored every other alarm to date, though, so it’s hard to tell if the needless death of a local senior will be enough to make them take action..Unless things change dramatically and soon, it won’t be a matter of if another person dies waiting for an ambulance, it will be a matter of when.
