EMS providers think single Sask. health authority can improve care

Paramedics and other emergency responders are hopeful that a single health authority in Saskatchewan will improve care for their patients.

"When you standardize and have a consistent approach, there's undoubtedly benefit to that," said Kyle Sereda, president of the Saskatchewan Emergency Medical Services Association.

His group lobbied for increased standardization for the 104 ground ambulance providers that respond to more than 120,000 calls a year in the province.

"An ambulance is an ambulance is an ambulance and when you phone 911 from whatever location you're calling from, the expectation of what you're going to receive is the same," Sereda said.

But that's difficult with the 12 regional health authorities that govern ambulance services right now, he said.

Consistency needed

It's a challenge noted by the provincial auditor in a recent report, as well as the three-person panel that recommended a single health authority to the government.

"There's no logic right now," said panel member Dr. Dennis Kendel about the distribution of paramedics with varying skill sets in the province.

"If you draw a line from North Battleford down to Regina, I think the only advanced life support is in Moose Jaw."

Kendel said the only thing dictating where more highly-skilled paramedics are stationed is whether an ambulance operator hires one or not.

"It would be more logical to have that distribution of expertise based on the needs of citizens, as opposed to the particular inclination of an operator in a particular community."

He said it can be challenging to keep advance care paramedics — who can deliver certain medications and treatments — working in more rural areas, some of which see fewer than one call per week.

"It can be a challenge to recruit and retain a primary care paramedic depending on those volumes," Sereda said. "These paramedics are trained to respond and treat these patients and need a level of exposure to continue that level of competency throughout their career."

Auditor's concerns to be addressed

Mark Wyatt, assistant deputy minister of health for the government, agreed that a single health authority should begin to streamline some emergency services.

He said that right now, each of the 104 ambulance providers has a contract for a particular territory, which means the closest ambulance is not necessarily the one that will respond in an emergency.

The government also intends to address issues raised in a recent auditor's report, which highlighted many of the concerns noted by the panel about the structure of ambulance services, as well as a lack of accountability, he said.

For instance, the auditor's report found that in the Cypress Health Region in southwestern Saskatchewan, four of the five contracts with emergency service providers were more than 20 years old and none of them included expectations of service quality, such as meeting response time targets.

Wyatt said a single health authority should help with many of those issues.

"The oversight and the management of the services and the contracts with all the providers will be consolidated, so that's certainly one of the big improvements that we see."