Last weekend, some health care statistics were quietly released with little fanfare. Today, legacy media has already forgotten them. This is a pity because the dramatic improvement in waiting times for ambulances due to new policies implemented by the UCP should be making headlines..As recently as last fall, Albertans were dying while waiting for ambulance service. One of the worst cases was with an elderly woman who bled out after a dog attack just minutes away from Calgary’s largest hospital while waiting roughly 40 minutes for an ambulance to arrive. Red alert periods in Calgary and Edmonton where there were no ambulances available were commonplace. Meanwhile, rural ambulances were pulled into urban centres, forcing local fire departments and police to take on paramedic roles as they desperately transported injured people to hospitals..Paramedics and citizens have raised concerns about the issue for years and while multiple governments have paid lip-service to the problem, none have don’t anything aside from tossing more money at the issue with little no effect..Until now that is..Danielle Smith raised the EMS crisis as an issue while running for the UCP leadership and she promised to act upon it when she became premier..Last December the Smith government announced changes to be made to improve EMS response times. To begin with, vans were to be equipped and contracted for use in non-emergency transfers of patients. Ambulances and trained paramedic teams had been doing up to 75 trips per day transporting patients who weren’t in need of emergency services..The NDP predictably responded with hysterics and accused Smith of wanting to harm patients by using Ubers instead of ambulances. In these cases, despite the hyperbole from the NDP, Uber is often a more appropriate option than a fully equipped ambulance..Smith also vowed to increase physicians, nurses, and other resources for triage in emergency rooms to reduce the time paramedics are stuck doing hallway care as the hospitals refuse to admit patients. At times, as many as 20 ambulances could be piled up outside of hospitals as paramedics can’t find hospital staff willing to take their patients..NDP health critic David Shepherd panned the plan saying ““I can’t see this announcement being anything but an incredible disappointment to Alberta’s paramedics and front-line health-care workers,”.The UCP government started to set timelines for emergency rooms to take patients. The NDP accused the government of forcing paramedics to dump-and-run with patients which was utterly untrue. Hospitals were expected to admit patients from ambulances in less than 40 minutes which is not an unreasonable ask..It has been a few months; the numbers are in and they look fantastic..In November, 2022, Calgary was in a state of EMS red alert for 4.2 hours. Last April that number was down to 4 minutes..Ambulance response times last November averaged 22 minutes in urban areas and 64 minutes in rural zones. Last April, response times had dropped to 12 minutes in urban areas and 40 in rural areas. .The silence on this success is deafening. .There is no doubt about this. Lives are going to be saved thanks to the changes made by the UCP to EMS policies. We should be shouting this from the rooftops and examining more commonsense approaches to health care bottlenecks in the system. Unfortunately, partisan loathing of Danielle Smith has rendered the establishment and legacy media outlets incapable of crediting Smith with doing something right. .The bloated Alberta Health Services (AHS) bureaucracy has created an expensive and inefficient health care system incapable of embracing change or innovation in care. In firing the inept AHS board and forcing common sense solutions to problems, Smith has managed to bring about quick success with a crisis that hadn't seen improvement in over a decade. .Premier Smith is now taking a strong, no-nonsense approach with taking on the addiction epidemic. Smith is surrounding herself with treatment specialists and recovered addicts rather than listening to the usual suspects in the establishment who insist on further enablement policies. Enablement policies for addicts have failed and are failing throughout North America. Overdoses continue to climb while the number of addicted people keeps growing. .We need results based policy rather than aspirational, ideological pap. .Smith is willing to try to cut through the BS and impose policies that work rather than pursuing policies that feel good. .If Smith loses this election due an establishment that refuses to accept positive changes, the health care system and addicts in need of treatment will all suffer for it. .If we can't credit a success, we will never see more of it.
