Windsor's Mayor says he has significant concerns about the ongoing code red and code black situations in the city when it comes to ambulance response times.
The comments were made during Monday's council meeting after councillor Fred Francis brought up county council's debate on the update to the 2024 Land Ambulance Response Time Standard Performance Plan.
The plan, which was created in 2012, hasn't been updated since its inception.
The plan follows a response time based on medical urgency, where Sudden Cardiac Arrest is the most urgent, and then it ranges on the Canadian Triage Acuity Scale (CTAS) also based on urgency, where CTAS 1 is extremely urgent, and CTAS 5 is considered non-urgent.
Local health system pressures continue to impact response times and performance in 2023, including continued offload delays, decreased hospital capacity, increased backlog of health care follow-up and treatment, paramedic fatigue, an increase in EMS call volume, among many other local issues.
Essex-Windsor EMS Chief, Bruce Krauter explained that recommended in the 2024 Plan is to alter the response times for CTAS 3, 4, and 5, which are considered non-life-threatening conditions, to increase speed and urgency based on patient conditions.
County council ultimately decided to vote against the new 2024 Plan, and voted in favour of keeping next year's plan the same as the current 2023 Plan.
Mayor Drew Dilkens says everyone should be concerned.
"There have been ongoing and sustained code red and code blacks situations that affect the residents in the City of Windsor. And that could be up to and including calling 911 and being told there's no ambulance available, figure it out yourself."
He says the city needs to stay on top of this issue and keep a close eye on what moves the county makes.
"Because I as the mayor, I have very significant concerns about the ongoing code red and code blacks situations that affect all of the residents in every ward in this city, and so we expect they're going to fix their staffing issue that they have, and get the right the people that can staff the ambulances and respond to the calls that are coming in accordingly."
Dilkens says the hospital is attuned to the issue and is trying to find solutions as well.
"Everyone around this table knows that we do not deliver this service, we simply are funders to this service, but clearly the residents in our community are going to look to us to say what are you guys doing around this table to make sure that ambulance service is delivered appropriately."
County council said Windsor council should be consulted before any changes were made to the plan.
City administration says they're aware of the discussion that took place but they have not yet been given any directives from the county.
-With files from AM800's Meagan Delaurier