EDMONTON - A spike in ambulance response times has prompted the province to hire dozens of additional emergency medical workers in Edmonton.

The median response time In the past two years for so-called “lights and sirens” ambulance calls increased to eight minutes and 13 seconds from seven minutes.

Health Minister Fred Horne on Tuesday announced that five additional paramedics and 12 emergency medical technicians have been hired this month, and that 14 more vacancies will be fast-tracked to get to full staffing levels as soon as possible.

He also said that Alberta Health Services opened a new EMS station in northeast Edmonton on Jan. 17, and that five more are slated to open across the province between now and 2014, including one in the city’s west end.

In the meantime, the city will get two more ambulances on an interim basis, subject to staffing availability.

“We’ve known for some time that there is a need for additional resources in Edmonton,” Horne said in an interview.

“We’ve been planning the additional stations for some time and it will take a couple of years that all of this will be up and running.”

Horne said response times are longer because the population is growing and aging, with the result being EMS workers are responding to more calls than ever.

Liberal health critic MLA David Swann said the additional ambulances are nothing but a “short-term fix,” and additional hiring will only returns staffing levels back to where they were before burnt-out workers started fleeing the system.

“Without evidence and without listening to front-line workers, (the government) blew up the system in 2009. It was functioning well ... with good response times that were the envy of North America,” Swann said.

“For two years, the system now has been cracking under the straining of inefficient management, overburdened workers and we’re now up against the wall. We’ve probably had a few deaths and we’ve certainly had complications.”

In recent years the province brought emergency medical responders under the umbrella of Alberta Health Services.

Swann called on the province to invest more resources in the emergency response system and to initiate a review of the process.

“We have to get the Health Quality Council of Alberta to review the system ... and identify the bottlenecks and the bad decisions and move us to a system-wide fix,” Swann said.

In a letter to Horne, Swann noted that a November survey of EMS workers showed two in three are looking for other employment, in part because long response times and “profoundly discouraging” lengthy delays in emergency wards.

A memo to front-line workers from EMS vice-president Sue Conroy and senior medical director Dr. Ian Phelps said managers are working to address their concerns and improve morale.

“Edmonton response times overall have increased over the past year due to several factors, including the closure of two EMS stations in Edmonton since 2009, the decreased availability of the downtown station due to light rail transport construction and increased call volumes,” the memo said.

“We are also working with paramedics and the (Health Sciences Association) to better understand the issues and concerns identified by staff in a recent survey, and we are engaging front-line staff in the development of initiatives to address their concerns.”

City ambulances responded to nearly 48,000 lights and sirens calls in 2010-11, a number expected to increase to more than 65,000 in 2011-12.

Elisabeth Ballermann is president of the Health Sciences Association of Alberta, a union that represents more than 2,350 EMS workers employed by Alberta Health Services, including 386 in Edmonton.

She said workers are overwhelmed and don’t have the resources to do their jobs.

“The population is aging, the number of calls is growing, and there have been no new resources in five years, our members say,” Ballermann said. “All of those factors are multipliers.”

As a result, Ballermann said front-line workers are faced with “red alert” several times a day.

“That means there is not a single ambulance available in the city to respond to a call,” Ballermann said.

“It really has come to a crisis point. The stress of not being able to respond to an emergency, not being able to do the work, to get to the person ... It haunts them.

kkleiss@edmontonjournal.com

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