Health minister says it's possible to draw approximate comparison between new and old ambulance systems

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FREDERICTON - Health Minister Mike Murphy denied yesterday that he has given conflicting statements on ambulance response times.

Tory MLA David Alward accused the minister and the health department of duplicity this week after what appeared to be contradictory information about comparing response times between Ambulance New Brunswick and the old system.

Murphy said in May that response times have bettered under the new unified service, which last year merged 39 providers delivering 54 separate services. But health officials said this week that the two systems cannot be meaningfully compared, since different calculations and benchmarks have been used in measuring response times.

"These two statements actually work together," Murphy said. He maintained that precise, stationby- station comparisons cannot be made because of the differences in the two systems. But from estimates of how ambulances performed in 2006 in relation to Ambulance New Brunswick's new response-time standards, Murphy said it was possible to draw an approximate comparison.

From that comparison, he said, improvements were evident in Ambulance New Brunswick's performance.

"An estimate was made of where we were in 2006 "” not a detailed assessment, but in fact an estimate," Murphy said. "It's not a completely true reflection, but it's as close as we can get." The 2006 estimates were initially drawn up for the purposes of contract negotiations, to determine a baseline by which to measure the new service's performance, he said. They were put together from an in-depth analysis of 2006 data collected by ambulance dispatch centres in Moncton and Saint John, and took several months to prepare, he added.

The dispatch centres recorded data on when ambulances were called, when they left their stations and when they arrived on scene, but the data were not organized in any fashion, so analysis was a slow, manual process, Murphy said.

"You can't press a button and say give me the community time responses for Stanley or for Tracadie for whatever year," Murphy said, adding that differences in the structure of the two ambulance systems, including variances in station configuration and deployment methods, further stymied the analytic process.

Under Ambulance New Brunswick, everything is tracked electronically in a standardized fashion, he pointed out.

Alward was not satisfied by the minister's reasoning, saying the public had been misled by Murphy in May. "In no way is that a fair explanation," Alward said. "When he used (the 2006 data in May), he wasn't saying those were estimates.

He used it directly to compare what's going on today to what was going on in the past." The 2006 figures indicated that ambulances were meeting the urban standard of nine minutes 78 per cent of the time and the rural standard of 22 minutes 90 per cent of the time. Murphy said in May that the new service was meeting or exceeding those targets in all regions.

Ambulance New Brunswick's goal as a mature system is to meet the standards 90 per cent of the time. Murphy said the 2006 estimates were not ideal because they reflected only the conditions of that particular year.

"A better average of where we were before this new ambulance system is an average over three or four years, because you take account of all the variances," he said.