2024-02-29 22:36:08
(Montreal) The Quebec government announced Thursday nearly 630 million over five years which will finance various measures aimed at improving ambulance service. The Corporation des services d’ambulance du Québec (CSAQ) welcomes this, but considers that this is insufficient to improve ambulance coverage across the province.
Posted at 5:36 p.m.
Katrine Desautels The Canadian Press
Among the amounts announced by the Minister of Health, Christian Dubé, 5.9 million will be dedicated specifically to improving ambulance service in four regions: the Laurentians, Mauricie–Centre-du-Québec, Montérégie-Centre and Chaudière-Appalaches .
More specifically, this envelope will be used to convert shift schedules and add service hours in order to reduce response times.
The CSAQ said in a press release that it welcomed the minister’s desire to highlight the improvement of ambulance services. However, she affirms that the promised amounts “prove to be clearly insufficient to improve the response time of ambulances and ambulance coverage throughout Quebec.” She also deplores that the five-year plan does not include any addition of ambulances.
“It is known that to reduce ambulance response times, there must be more vehicles on the road,” said Dr. Sébastien Toussaint, president of the CSAQ, in a press release.
The Corporation des services d’ambulance du Québec estimates that the 5.9 million for this year “will only cover a tiny part of immediate needs.”
“Once once more, numerous requests for additional ambulances or hours of service for regions where needs are particularly pressing remain unanswered,” indicates the CSAQ.
She maintains that the initiatives announced Thursday cannot guarantee a significant reduction in intervention times nor compensate for coverage deficits in emergency pre-hospital services and she calls for a significant and predictable increase in ambulance services.
Reduce ambulance time at the hospital
The envelope of the government action plan for the emergency prehospital system in Quebec provides funds for defibrillators. Quebec will invest 3.5 million over five years to establish a bill governing public access to automated external defibrillators (AEDs) and their registration. The government therefore wishes to deploy 1000 DEAs and have a national register to geolocate devices that citizens can use.
In its plan, the Ministry of Health also hopes to increase the number of first responder services by investing $92.7 million over five years. He hopes that with this funding municipalities will be encouraged to set up more first responder services and the ministry also wants to analyze the needs in all regions, including sectors outside the road network, in order to ensure a systemic response everywhere. in Quebec.
Currently, 50% of the Quebec population is covered by a first responder service and the government’s objective is to reach 80% by 2028.
A total of 7.65 million over five years will be dedicated to reducing the time spent by ambulance resources in hospital centers. According to the ministry, the average duration of a pre-hospital intervention between departure to the place of care and departure from the hospital emergency is currently 100 minutes, including 50 spent in the hospital and this exceeds the 55 minutes to Montreal, Quebec, Laval or Gatineau.
The ministry has set a target of 45 minutes by 2026 and it calculates that this might recover the equivalent of 50,000 hours of ambulance availability.
The government also announced the creation of the first four heliports which will be located at the Lanaudière Regional Hospital Center in Joliette, at the Roberval Hospital, at the McGill University Health Center and at the Sacré-Cœur Hospital in Montreal.
Quebec remains the only Canadian province without public helicopter medical transport and the Ministry of Health wishes to remedy this by establishing standards of care and management of air medical transport. He also promises to create a call center for air transport.
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