The warden of Essex County is concerned about pressures on Essex Windsor EMS given an anticipated wave of COVID-19 cases and the fact we haven't hit flu season yet.
Gary McNamara expressed his concerned during a news conference Monday morning as the County declared a local emergency due to a dramatic increase in delays for paramedics to offload patients at local hospitals.
The declaration allows the County to bring together its Community Control Group - which includes senior leadership at the County along with local hospitals, the dispatch system and Ontario Health -- to discuss what needs to be done and what support needs to be requested from the province.
Essex Windsor EMS has been faced with consistent 'Code Blacks' since 2020, the term used to describe when there are no ambulances available to respond to emergency calls because paramedics are waiting at a hospital to off-load the patient.
As of Oct. 14, a total of 491 'Code Blacks' have been issued by Essex Windsor EMS during October, compared to 116 in all of September, with some delays lasting up to 12 hours long.
McNamara says it's only mid-October and he's concerned over what's to come.
"One of the biggest concerns that I have is we haven't even hit, yet, the flu season and COVID new wave. They're anticipating numbers going up and that could have a real impact as well to our Essex Windsor EMS services," he says.
McNamara says the rationale behind Monday's announcement is to try and be ahead of the problem.
"So that we can have at least a means to continue to deliver the good, solid, efficient, safe service to every resident of Windsor-Essex," he says.
McNamara says he's glad officials will be sitting around the table talking about measures to alleviate the situation.
"I certainly want to see a 300 per cent increase in November over the October numbers because that would be not only shocking, it creates some real havoc in the system," he adds.
Essex Windsor EMS is calling for several changes to address the current offloading situation:
- the ability to have paramedics treat and refer low acuity patients on-scene to divert away from the emergency department
- the ability to place a clinician in the dispatch centre to triage on the phone and refer patients to alternate care
- primary care providers to have open hours to be conducive to the public need