The measure of how tough last year was on paramedic services in Waterloo region is in, and it paints a clear picture of the strain offload delays had on the service.
An annual update on key performance indicators for paramedics shows ambulances are losing the equivalent of more than three 12-hour ambulance shifts per day in offload delay.
Offload delay is the time ambulances and paramedics wait at hospitals to transfer patients to an available bed, with much of the blame going to the province due to overburdened hospital staff and vacancies.
Those delays led to a massive increase in "code red" events in which paramedic services have no ambulances available to respond to the next emergency call and no out of town services immediately available to assist.
Total time spent in code red increased 571 per cent from 2021 (11.3 hours) to 2022 (75.9 hours). The longest code red last year was two hours and 43 minutes in which no ambulance was available for emergencies in Waterloo region or the surrounding counties.
In total, paramedics experienced 210 code red events in 2022 with a median length of 15 minutes 16 seconds per day in code red, compared to 42 events of a median length of 12 minutes 23 seconds in 2021.
Vehicle responses grew 11.0 per cent from 2021 to 2022; nearly double the pre-pandemic (2015-2019) annual growth rate of 6.5 per cent.
Unit utilization for 2022 was 48.3 per cent and remained well above the recommend threshold of 35.0 per cent.
Current unit utilization levels are unsustainable on an ongoing-basis, the report says.
Response times in 2022 were 17 seconds slower than in 2021.
These key indicators reflect the growing demands on Paramedic Services, driven at its core by a growing and aging population (adults 65 and older represent 43 per cent of call volume), and exacerbated by increased hospital and health system flow issues across the province, the report says.
"They underscore the importance of the council-supported shift to a high-growth planning scenario as per the Paramedic Services Master Plan, the efforts undertaken locally to mitigate impacts where possible, and the continued need for engagement of the provincial Ministry of Health with Paramedic Services on broader health system issues which are resulting in offload delays."
Council approved the addition of three 12-hour ambulances last October.
As part of the 2023 budget process, council approved the addition of four new 12-hour ambulances to be on-boarded in July and the addition of four more 12-hour ambulance units to commence January 1, 2024.
