Region of Waterloo Paramedic Services and the region’s three hospitals will get more than $1.6 million from the Ministry of Health to support the hospitals' Dedicated Offload Nurses Program.
This funding for staff offload positions in emergency departments is intended to free up ambulances and paramedics to return to communities as soon as possible to provide more people with access to timely emergency care, and is "a significant increase in funding from previous years," said a press release.
This one-time funding will be shared by Cambridge Memorial Hospital, Grand River Hospital and St. Mary’s General Hospital to support the 2023/24 funding year.
It will support an increase of Designated Offload Nurse coverage in each hospital’s emergency department to 24 hours a day, seven days a week until March 31, 2024.
“Cambridge Memorial Hospital welcomes this investment for additional funding through the Dedicated Offload Nurses Program," said Stephanie Pearsall, CMH's vice president of clinical services and chief nursing executive in a press release. "By working together, we can ensure valuable paramedic resources are able to respond to the community’s needs and assure offloaded patients are safely monitored and assessed.”
The region's chief of paramedic services, John Riches, said they will continue to work with hospitals to implement efficiencies that ensure paramedics can be available at all times for anyone calling 911 with a medical emergency.
"We are grateful that the Region of Waterloo is being provided with this significant increase in funding from the Ministry of Health to substantially enhance the existing Designated Offload Nurses Program in all three of our community hospitals,” he said in the release.
