Essex County approves hiring of 12 full-time paramedics in 2022 budget

Essex County council passed its 2022 budget Wednesday and one key item for residents is the hiring of 12 full-time equivalent paramedic positions.

The positions required a $1.5-million increase and had been in the works since 2019, said Bruce Krauter, chief of Essex-Windsor EMS.

He said they are already in the midst of a recruitment drive that will run until April, and will likely start another then.

When the pandemic hit, the number of calls went down as the region went into lockdown and Krauter said the decision to put off the increase was made.

Paramedics were put into other positions, used for testing and at vaccination clinics among other things, but now that things have opened up again, the number has started to climb.

"We have to prepare now for recovery and moving forward and how to replenish the ranks," he said.

Unfortunately, as the system gets fuller and fuller, that conveyor belt backs up.— Bruce Krauter

The 12 positions will be dedicated to working in ambulances.

"We're going to be looking at the volumes and the deployments and see what best utilization we can for those 12 full-time permanent hours, where they go with the system to get the optimum coverage so that we can reduce, mitigate — so hopefully we don't have code blacks," he said.

Code black refers to instances when there are no ambulances available to respond.

There have been several instances in recent months where code blacks occurred.

'System issue'

Code blacks are the "collateral damage" of COVID-19 on the health-care system, Krauter said.

"Code black is a health-care system issue where hospital capacity — and I'm not blaming hospitals — but the hospital capacities are being used in such a way that they don't have the bed space and unfortunately, ambulance volume continues," he said.

"We're like a conveyor belt. We just keep feeding the system. And unfortunately, as the system gets fuller and fuller, that conveyor belt backs up."