Albertans who call 911 with a non-urgent concern will be directed to Health Link's 811 moving forward.
The EMS-811 Shared Response program was announced Thursday as part of the Province's Health Care Action Plan (HCAP).
The Province said this is another step in reducing ambulance wait times and prioritizing calls while ensuring effective care. The plan is part of a broader strategy under the director of Alberta Health Services' official administrator Dr. John Cowell, which is due to address all initiatives by Feb. 17.
Highwood MLA RJ Sigurdson has been involved in this process since his appointment as parliamentary secretary for EMS reform by the premier.
He said via press release that this program fulfills promises the government has made.
“I would like to thank the front-line workers in dispatch centres and paramedics for saving lives of Albertans every day," Sigurdson said. "As promised, we are acting on the solutions and ideas EMS workers brought forward to better manage non-urgent calls and find ways to provide the appropriate level of care for Albertans.
"Transferring non-urgent calls will help ease the strain on EMS front-line workers and help focus their efforts on the most urgent calls, where their level of care is needed.”
An emergency communications officer will transfer a call to 811 if they feel the situation would best be addressed with an alternative level of care, Transferred calls will go directly to a registered nurse without being directed to a queue. Officials said in a press conference that a direct line has been established for this program, so patients calling Health Link directly won't be affected.
A caller will be informed of this process, according to the Province, and an ambulance can be dispatched at any time, should it be required.
Minister of Health Jason Copping said the new response protocol will free up paramedics on 40,000 calls annually.
The NDP said this announcement falls short of what paramedics want.
"Crews must get off-shift on time, all paramedics must be offered a permanent full-time contract and harm-reduction services need to expand to cut down the huge number of drug poisoning calls," said health critic David Shepherd in a statement.
“It is so disappointing to witness the UCP, yet again, ignore real solutions presented from front-line EMS workers to address the ambulance crisis," Shepherd said. "The UCP keeps tinkering around the edges rather than hiring and retaining Alberta paramedics and front-line EMS workers.
“The fact that there were no paramedics at the government’s press conference today speaks volumes to me about their adversarial relationship with front-line health-care workers."
