Provincial service creates 32 more full-time positions, buys specialty emergency vehicles

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BY ALAN COCHRANE
TIMES & TRANSCRIPT STAFF

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Ambulance New Brunswick is hiring new paramedics as fast as they graduate and bringing in people from outside the country to help fill the gaps and offer better service, the service's president and CEO said yesterday.

"We've been short paramedics from the start," Rock Marois said yesterday as the service announced it will be hiring another batch of paramedics within a few months and increasing the number of hours that ambulances are on duty, especially in rural areas of the province. The increases will mean the creation of 32 new full-time paramedic positions, which means the fleet of ambulances will be available for more hours.

Also, Ambulance New Brunswick is about to purchase four new "rapid response units" which will be available to ambulance supervisors and managers who may be called out to assist other paramedics in the case of a major emergency.

Ambulance New Brunswick is responsible for administration and dispatching of all ambulance services throughout the province. All dispatches go through a 911 centre on John Street in Moncton that opened this summer. The dispatch centre tracks the ambulances through computerized GPS technology and moves them around to provide the best coverage. Over the last year, the service has taken criticism from the public and some politicians for response times and coverage.

Marois said the 32 positions will be posted soon and should be filled by the end of January. This means some paramedics may apply for a transfer and others will be hired to fill in the positions. He said a French-language class of paramedics is graduating about 15 students today. Classes in Fredericton and Moncton will be graduating about 50 students each next June. Marois said some new paramedics are also coming from outside the province, including a few who moved here from England recently.

The Miramichi should benefit the most from the expansion as that region will have eight new positions. There will also be six new positions in the Fredericton and Saint John Regions; four in Sussex and four in Fredericton Junction, two in St. Stephen and two in Woodstock. A total of 28 communities will benefit from the 32 extra positions, which means 92 unit hours per day.

Marois said the number of ambulances won't increase, but the amount of extra paramedics will mean they can be on the road longer. The service has a fleet of 133 ambulances. Of those, about 120 are usually on the road and the rest are either resting or being serviced.

Marois said the new rapid response vehicles should be in service by December. They will be four-wheel-drive trucks equipped with medical supplies and first-aid equipment, but not equipped to transport patients. The idea is to have one in each of the four regions of New Brunswick. When they go in service, they will mainly operate in the busy urban areas. The idea is to have the all-weather trucks available for paramedic managers who are usually in the office but can be called out to co-ordinate staff at the scene of major emergencies.

Marois said the increased staff numbers is part of the service's pledge to improve over time.

"The experience and knowledge gained over our first 10 months of operations allow us to better identify where resources can be added to make an already good system even better," he said in a news release announcing the changes. "Our initial focus was on consolidating the previous fragmented ambulance operations into one province-wide system. As part of this process we hired 105 paramedics simply to bring the initial level of resources to the level it needed to be. With many vacancies now filled, we can turn our focus to adding resources."

Marois said one of the biggest challenges is providing ambulance service to the many small communities and homes on the rural back roads of the province.

"We're spreading our limited resources out the best we can."

The ambulance service has a mandate of nine-minute response times in urban areas and 22 minutes in rural areas, 90 per cent of the time.

"You're always going to get calls that will take longer for a number of reasons, like distance or bad weather."

In order to cover the rural areas, ambulances are posted at various locations that will give paramedics the best chance of getting to a call quickly. Calls for medical assistance go through the dispatch centre in Moncton and the ambulance closest to the caller is sent to the scene. Depending on the situation, another ambulance may be moved from one location to another in order to cover for one that just answered a call. The ambulances are tracked on a map at the dispatch centre using GPS locators so dispatchers know at a glance where they are. The GPS system also allows dispatchers to guide paramedics to the location of an emergency call, thus saving valuable time.

Perhaps the biggest change in the new system is that ambulances are often seen parked or roaming in various communities while waiting for a call. Marois said the service has 70 stations around the province but fixed stations are not necessarily the best place to be. He said roaming ambulances are moved to a location where they can provide the fastest response time.

But response times aren't everything. In some cases, the paramedics are actually being told to slow down a bit and make sure they are safe.