Essex-Windsor EMS is working to improve response times for 2026.
Essex-Windsor EMS Chief Justin Lammers spoke to County Council earlier this week regarding 2025 response times, and ways to improve those times heading into the new year.
Lammers stated to council that while unit down-staffing, periods of limited ambulance resources, and offload delays are trending down, however call volumes are trending up.
EMS continues to work with local fire departments as well to find opportunities to improve Sudden Cardiac Arrest arrival times.
Lammers states that cardiac arrest response times are currently at 46 per cent - which is below the provincial mandate of 55 per cent. Response times for cardiac arrests were at 64 per cent in 2024.
Response times for other incidents from urgent to non-urgent remain nearly identical to last year's figures.
He says response times for things such as cardiac arrests need to improve.
"That's something that we want to influence, and we want to get as high as possible because we know that every minute that goes by where we don't have CPR and defibrillation, we're losing about a 10 per cent in survival rate. So, sitting at a number of 46 per cent right now, which is forecasted for 2025, we need to get that number up."
Lammers says they are working to make improvements.
"We do that through operational efficiencies, we do that through making sure our ambulances are available to respond, but we've also done a lot of work in the community with training members of the public in CPR and defibrillator use, as well as mapping our where public access defibs are, and installing more public access defibs."
He says call volumes continue to increase.
"We're forecasting a 4.36 per cent increase in call volumes this year. We have not had a year where our call volume went down. Every year that goes by, our calls get higher and higher, so we're at a critical point now where we need to make sure that we have the resources that are required to meet the demand now, but we also need to prepare for the future."
Lammers adds that a delay in response times can be due to a number of factors such as residents living in a rural area, ambulance availability, and staffing.
Essex-Windsor EMS is scheduled to transition to a new dispatching system to provide better accuracy in dispatching by reducing over-triaging, which keeps ambulances available for critical cases, such as sudden cardiac arrest.
The report was received by County Council.
-with files from AM800's The Shift with Patty Handysides