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Letter to Canmore Town Council

Don Sharpe
Don Sharpe

Post the AHS EMS Calgary Zone Leadership Presentation to Canmore Town Council, I wrote them this letter.

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AHS EMS Presentation to CANMORE Town Council January 18, 2022 Dear Canmore Mayor and Councillors, I watched the AHS EMS portion of your Council ZOOM meeting of Jan 18. My intention writing this letter is two fold. Primarily, Id like you to have Competent, Constant EMS you can be proud of. To achieve that goal, Im going to have to point out what happened at that meeting. You may not like some of what I have to say. There are four basic needs you currently want delivered by AHS EMS. 1. An Emergency Ambulance Available in your community MOST OF THE TIME. 2. Backup Plan for Transport when YOUR Emergency Ambulance isnt available. 3. A Transfer Ambulance System for moving Patients to/from your Hospital. 4. YOUR Emergency Ambulance CONSISTENTLY Returned to your Community. I believe Randy made it clear you cant have those things now or anytime in future. Randy made a lot of excuses on behalf of his Provincial EMS. He blamed the current and previous governments. He blamed the Pandemic. He blamed the Hospitals. He blamed Paramedics on social media and told you to only listen to his AHS EMS side of the story. Randy promised to share info, address concerns and find opportunities to improve. He did none of those. Instead, he didnt bring stats you asked for, he didnt solve any of your problems and he used a lot of EMS and Medical jargon that was clearly misleading. He stated he didnt know much about Dispatch, that he was partially handcuffed by the Union agreement and that maybe you needed more AEDs After the presentation, you really had no more useful information than before; you simply had excuses for why you werent being served. You were told the historical date showed you really didnt have a call volume that justified more resources. You were then told that at least 25% of the time Ambulances had to respond from somewhere else into Canmore. That contradiction alone is a huge red flag. You were told that Banff is your Buffer do you think Banff is happy about that? You were told that previous mutual aid agreements werent any good and that a BORDERLESS SYSTEM is better but then he couldnt even tell you how many times YOUR Emergency Ambulance is dispatched to Calgary from Canmore compared to being used to do calls in Calgary after clearing the city hospitals. He couldnt tell you how often or for how long your Paramedics sit in the Hospital Hallways. He couldnt tell you how often your Canmore Core Flex truck times out, has to stand down and is unable to respond to Emergency Calls in Canmore.
AHS EMS Presentation to CANMORE Town Council January 18, 2022 Randy told you that its a good thing that half of the transports your Emergency Ambulance does are to Canmore hospital you do realize that the other half of the transports go to Calgary and are by default a bad thing But theyre just bad for you and your Citizens, not bad at all for Randy or AHS EMS. You were told response time targets were within limits for success set by EMS. You were told they discuss the 90th percentile issues every quarter and do nothing. You were told there is a 35% increase in call volume hang on, thats in the City. Canmores call volume has remained stable, like most rural communities. So does that make it OK to RAID THE EMS RESOURCES of RURAL Communities? What if your Fire Trucks or your Police Cars were sent to Calgary every day? How long would you put up with that? Not more than a Hot Minute. Why is it OK that your Emergency Ambulance be used to fix City of Calgary issues? Why are Rural Citizens being punished for these increasing Urban Call Volumes? Your Canmore Hospital Physicians would dearly love to have Patients using an alternate transport service option something that was more dependable and safe and polite and accountable. In other words, Private Providers. Randy talks about family, volunteer shuttles and taxi service, but whos going to take the elderly stretcher patient in for a surgical consult or other treatments? Randy told you that any Private Paramedic Transport Service was Too Expensive. I thought one of you might ask, Wait, how expensive is it? Who pays for it? Right now, your Citizens are paying with their lives, because right now your only two Emergency Ambulances are moving those patients, if theyre moved at all. Every day Patients MISS APPOINTMENTS because there arent enough AHS TRANSFER Ambulances to move them because theyre doing EMERGENCY CALLS because there arent enough of those darn Emergency Ambulances either. I hope you are starting to see how these three EMS Managers played you. You received no helpful information and certainly were not given any solutions. Those 35% increases in EMS call volume mentioned arent happening in Canmore. There is no magical AHS EMS dispatch protocol that will return your Emergency Ambulances to Canmore someday. AHS EMS says theyre going to eventually respond to Calgary Patients who called for EMS and were queued because their complaints were minor in nature. Calgary is in RED ALERT every single day. How much time will pass before members of Council will be getting the phone call from a Canmore resident complaining that theyve been queued for hours? Randy talked about increasing the hours of the single transfer Ambulance thats based out of Cochrane but he cant staff the vehicles hes got. He says hes putting extra Ambulances on the street every day but every Monday there are hundreds of empty shifts scheduled for the week ahead and Ambulances are booked out of service for lack of staff every single day. Theres no math that makes that work.
AHS EMS Presentation to CANMORE Town Council January 18, 2022 Hospital waits are unprecedented Randys plan is to raise awareness in the Hospital. But wait, theres an Integrated Operations Center coming in a couple of months. An air traffic control for the hospital system. Hospital waits are unprecedented and EMS is going to help fix that when Randy admits, We have very little control of patient movement within the hospital system. I have zero confidence in this IOC effort, I dont believe the Hospitals have any interest in EMS advice on their, input, distribution of patients, throughput and output. AHS EMS can have all the real time and predicative data they like, when the Hospital says Go sit in the hallway, thats what theyll do. An EMS System controlled by the Hospital has been shown repeatedly to serve the Hospital first. You were all advised to lobby the government, like Randy has. Which he admits hasnt worked. Since 2009 Randy et al have all failed to get any new resources. Theres been a steady decline in service. Seriously, why havent they all been fired? Many of the Ambulances they have now are thousands of kilometers over their due dates for mechanical inspection and regular service. Paramedics in the Calgary Zone are exhausted, with up to 40% now off with physical and mental health injuries. Randy and his team say they are are looking at both sides of the model cant see the forest for the trees. EMS has neglected their fleet for years and has been wearing both the Vehicles and the Paramedics out with constant flexing Randy admits your Canmore Emergency Ambulances are often dispatched to Calgary for a call and then turned around when a closer Ambulance becomes available. He justifies it by saying, Thats what we have to do. That. Is. Crazy. I could go on at length about the Moral Injuries inflicted on your Canmore Paramedics by many standard EMS protocols like this but I dont have the time. Ill just say that AHS EMS seemingly doesnt care or cant understand what damage theyre doing and blaming everyone and everything EXCEPT their own incompetence. Their EMS System Status Management Plan is failing Canmore. You cant possibly be OK with that. Theyre promising Dispatch upgrades in a system they describe as Dynamic. So much was said dismissing your concerns, that I cant for as second believe that the have the best interests of your Canmore Community in their heart. At the 57 minute mark Randy stutters a bit and says the private provider is more expensive, which simply isnt true. I dont think he really believes any of that. He then admitted that it does keep the Emergency Ambulance in the community. At the 58 minute mark Randy gave you more misinformation about private transport. He dismissed the extra funding for patient transport out of hand. Perhaps he know nothing about it because it has NOTHING TO DO WITH HIM. Any bills for private transport of patients from Canmore Hospital would go straight to Edmonton, they would never even cross Randys desk.
AHS EMS Presentation to CANMORE Town Council January 18, 2022 Randy is trying to scare you, talking about safe transport. Private Paramedical Transport Services are SAFE. Frankly, with the careless protocol AHS EMS manages mechanical servicing of their fleet with, Private Transport might actually be SAFER. There was a question about communication with and buy in from local Paramedics. I dont believe EMS Staff have much faith in anything their managers say. Randy says theyre isolated Id say estranged would be a better description. When Leadership is consistently silent on issues of major concern thats no surprise. Finally, reaching out to Rob, Curtis & Randy will only ever get you the AHS STORY. When someone tells you to believe the data or that this is for your own good and dont listen to social media, please use your own eyes to see whats happening in your beautiful Canmore Community. Dont listen to anyone. Do whats Right. At the beginning of this letter I made clear my intention was only to share my perspective on the meeting. I seek nothing from you other than an open communication, competent governance and available EMS. We had spoken previously and I BLAME MYSELF for not preparing Canmore Town Council better for this presentation. Im just an Alberta Registered Paramedic, without the resources that AHS has at their disposal. I dont claim to speak for anyone but myself. Ive only tried to share the truth as I and others see it. Where do you go from here? Youve no doubt seen MLA Peter Guthries video calling AHS Bloated and Underperforming. AHS EMS wont let go easily. The time for ACTION by Canmore Town Council on this issue is RIGHT NOW. I have the same advice for every Rural Community and Town Council in Alberta. Your job is to protect citizens. To do that, you need to protect your Paramedics. They need to be in your Community. They need to be trained, rested and ready. Paramedics need to be there to help your Citizens on the worst day of their life. Look back at those four things you dont have. See how they are all connected. Talk to your town legal council. Talk to your Citizens who were EMS volunteers 15 years ago. You need to do something RIGHT NOW. Every day you wait this WILL GET WORSE. There is no help coming from the govt, or AHS EMS. That much was made clear. Want accurate advice of private transport? Go to the source. Call Medsource Inc, based in Cochrane. Ask what they can do to help move patients. The Owner is Mike Klapey. Hes a good citizen, a responsible entrepreneur. If youre not aware of just how serious this problem is, have a look at the following letter. Strathmore Hospital asked Aaron Paramedical to move several patients two weeks ago because, they couldnt depend on AHS to get an Ambulance to them in a timely fashion.
AHS EMS Presentation to CANMORE Town Council January 18, 2022 Aaron Paramedical completed all of the transports and last week were informed that Strathmore Hospital had be ordered not to use Aaron in the future. Read the letter. Is that fair play or is something else going on? Now read the following news stories from Airdrie. Last week Airdrie Fire transported two patients from two separate calls to the Airdrie Urgent Care in a Fire Truck. IN A FIRE TRUCK. Thats what its come to. https://www.discoverairdrie.com/local/airdrie-fire-department-transports-two- patients-to-urgent-care-no-ambulances-available Mayor and Council, I wish you well. Don Sharpe Paramedic.
AHS EMS Presentation to CANMORE Town Council January 18, 2022

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Letter to Canmore Town Council

  • 1. AHS EMS Presentation to CANMORE Town Council January 18, 2022 Dear Canmore Mayor and Councillors, I watched the AHS EMS portion of your Council ZOOM meeting of Jan 18. My intention writing this letter is two fold. Primarily, Id like you to have Competent, Constant EMS you can be proud of. To achieve that goal, Im going to have to point out what happened at that meeting. You may not like some of what I have to say. There are four basic needs you currently want delivered by AHS EMS. 1. An Emergency Ambulance Available in your community MOST OF THE TIME. 2. Backup Plan for Transport when YOUR Emergency Ambulance isnt available. 3. A Transfer Ambulance System for moving Patients to/from your Hospital. 4. YOUR Emergency Ambulance CONSISTENTLY Returned to your Community. I believe Randy made it clear you cant have those things now or anytime in future. Randy made a lot of excuses on behalf of his Provincial EMS. He blamed the current and previous governments. He blamed the Pandemic. He blamed the Hospitals. He blamed Paramedics on social media and told you to only listen to his AHS EMS side of the story. Randy promised to share info, address concerns and find opportunities to improve. He did none of those. Instead, he didnt bring stats you asked for, he didnt solve any of your problems and he used a lot of EMS and Medical jargon that was clearly misleading. He stated he didnt know much about Dispatch, that he was partially handcuffed by the Union agreement and that maybe you needed more AEDs After the presentation, you really had no more useful information than before; you simply had excuses for why you werent being served. You were told the historical date showed you really didnt have a call volume that justified more resources. You were then told that at least 25% of the time Ambulances had to respond from somewhere else into Canmore. That contradiction alone is a huge red flag. You were told that Banff is your Buffer do you think Banff is happy about that? You were told that previous mutual aid agreements werent any good and that a BORDERLESS SYSTEM is better but then he couldnt even tell you how many times YOUR Emergency Ambulance is dispatched to Calgary from Canmore compared to being used to do calls in Calgary after clearing the city hospitals. He couldnt tell you how often or for how long your Paramedics sit in the Hospital Hallways. He couldnt tell you how often your Canmore Core Flex truck times out, has to stand down and is unable to respond to Emergency Calls in Canmore.
  • 2. AHS EMS Presentation to CANMORE Town Council January 18, 2022 Randy told you that its a good thing that half of the transports your Emergency Ambulance does are to Canmore hospital you do realize that the other half of the transports go to Calgary and are by default a bad thing But theyre just bad for you and your Citizens, not bad at all for Randy or AHS EMS. You were told response time targets were within limits for success set by EMS. You were told they discuss the 90th percentile issues every quarter and do nothing. You were told there is a 35% increase in call volume hang on, thats in the City. Canmores call volume has remained stable, like most rural communities. So does that make it OK to RAID THE EMS RESOURCES of RURAL Communities? What if your Fire Trucks or your Police Cars were sent to Calgary every day? How long would you put up with that? Not more than a Hot Minute. Why is it OK that your Emergency Ambulance be used to fix City of Calgary issues? Why are Rural Citizens being punished for these increasing Urban Call Volumes? Your Canmore Hospital Physicians would dearly love to have Patients using an alternate transport service option something that was more dependable and safe and polite and accountable. In other words, Private Providers. Randy talks about family, volunteer shuttles and taxi service, but whos going to take the elderly stretcher patient in for a surgical consult or other treatments? Randy told you that any Private Paramedic Transport Service was Too Expensive. I thought one of you might ask, Wait, how expensive is it? Who pays for it? Right now, your Citizens are paying with their lives, because right now your only two Emergency Ambulances are moving those patients, if theyre moved at all. Every day Patients MISS APPOINTMENTS because there arent enough AHS TRANSFER Ambulances to move them because theyre doing EMERGENCY CALLS because there arent enough of those darn Emergency Ambulances either. I hope you are starting to see how these three EMS Managers played you. You received no helpful information and certainly were not given any solutions. Those 35% increases in EMS call volume mentioned arent happening in Canmore. There is no magical AHS EMS dispatch protocol that will return your Emergency Ambulances to Canmore someday. AHS EMS says theyre going to eventually respond to Calgary Patients who called for EMS and were queued because their complaints were minor in nature. Calgary is in RED ALERT every single day. How much time will pass before members of Council will be getting the phone call from a Canmore resident complaining that theyve been queued for hours? Randy talked about increasing the hours of the single transfer Ambulance thats based out of Cochrane but he cant staff the vehicles hes got. He says hes putting extra Ambulances on the street every day but every Monday there are hundreds of empty shifts scheduled for the week ahead and Ambulances are booked out of service for lack of staff every single day. Theres no math that makes that work.
  • 3. AHS EMS Presentation to CANMORE Town Council January 18, 2022 Hospital waits are unprecedented Randys plan is to raise awareness in the Hospital. But wait, theres an Integrated Operations Center coming in a couple of months. An air traffic control for the hospital system. Hospital waits are unprecedented and EMS is going to help fix that when Randy admits, We have very little control of patient movement within the hospital system. I have zero confidence in this IOC effort, I dont believe the Hospitals have any interest in EMS advice on their, input, distribution of patients, throughput and output. AHS EMS can have all the real time and predicative data they like, when the Hospital says Go sit in the hallway, thats what theyll do. An EMS System controlled by the Hospital has been shown repeatedly to serve the Hospital first. You were all advised to lobby the government, like Randy has. Which he admits hasnt worked. Since 2009 Randy et al have all failed to get any new resources. Theres been a steady decline in service. Seriously, why havent they all been fired? Many of the Ambulances they have now are thousands of kilometers over their due dates for mechanical inspection and regular service. Paramedics in the Calgary Zone are exhausted, with up to 40% now off with physical and mental health injuries. Randy and his team say they are are looking at both sides of the model cant see the forest for the trees. EMS has neglected their fleet for years and has been wearing both the Vehicles and the Paramedics out with constant flexing Randy admits your Canmore Emergency Ambulances are often dispatched to Calgary for a call and then turned around when a closer Ambulance becomes available. He justifies it by saying, Thats what we have to do. That. Is. Crazy. I could go on at length about the Moral Injuries inflicted on your Canmore Paramedics by many standard EMS protocols like this but I dont have the time. Ill just say that AHS EMS seemingly doesnt care or cant understand what damage theyre doing and blaming everyone and everything EXCEPT their own incompetence. Their EMS System Status Management Plan is failing Canmore. You cant possibly be OK with that. Theyre promising Dispatch upgrades in a system they describe as Dynamic. So much was said dismissing your concerns, that I cant for as second believe that the have the best interests of your Canmore Community in their heart. At the 57 minute mark Randy stutters a bit and says the private provider is more expensive, which simply isnt true. I dont think he really believes any of that. He then admitted that it does keep the Emergency Ambulance in the community. At the 58 minute mark Randy gave you more misinformation about private transport. He dismissed the extra funding for patient transport out of hand. Perhaps he know nothing about it because it has NOTHING TO DO WITH HIM. Any bills for private transport of patients from Canmore Hospital would go straight to Edmonton, they would never even cross Randys desk.
  • 4. AHS EMS Presentation to CANMORE Town Council January 18, 2022 Randy is trying to scare you, talking about safe transport. Private Paramedical Transport Services are SAFE. Frankly, with the careless protocol AHS EMS manages mechanical servicing of their fleet with, Private Transport might actually be SAFER. There was a question about communication with and buy in from local Paramedics. I dont believe EMS Staff have much faith in anything their managers say. Randy says theyre isolated Id say estranged would be a better description. When Leadership is consistently silent on issues of major concern thats no surprise. Finally, reaching out to Rob, Curtis & Randy will only ever get you the AHS STORY. When someone tells you to believe the data or that this is for your own good and dont listen to social media, please use your own eyes to see whats happening in your beautiful Canmore Community. Dont listen to anyone. Do whats Right. At the beginning of this letter I made clear my intention was only to share my perspective on the meeting. I seek nothing from you other than an open communication, competent governance and available EMS. We had spoken previously and I BLAME MYSELF for not preparing Canmore Town Council better for this presentation. Im just an Alberta Registered Paramedic, without the resources that AHS has at their disposal. I dont claim to speak for anyone but myself. Ive only tried to share the truth as I and others see it. Where do you go from here? Youve no doubt seen MLA Peter Guthries video calling AHS Bloated and Underperforming. AHS EMS wont let go easily. The time for ACTION by Canmore Town Council on this issue is RIGHT NOW. I have the same advice for every Rural Community and Town Council in Alberta. Your job is to protect citizens. To do that, you need to protect your Paramedics. They need to be in your Community. They need to be trained, rested and ready. Paramedics need to be there to help your Citizens on the worst day of their life. Look back at those four things you dont have. See how they are all connected. Talk to your town legal council. Talk to your Citizens who were EMS volunteers 15 years ago. You need to do something RIGHT NOW. Every day you wait this WILL GET WORSE. There is no help coming from the govt, or AHS EMS. That much was made clear. Want accurate advice of private transport? Go to the source. Call Medsource Inc, based in Cochrane. Ask what they can do to help move patients. The Owner is Mike Klapey. Hes a good citizen, a responsible entrepreneur. If youre not aware of just how serious this problem is, have a look at the following letter. Strathmore Hospital asked Aaron Paramedical to move several patients two weeks ago because, they couldnt depend on AHS to get an Ambulance to them in a timely fashion.
  • 5. AHS EMS Presentation to CANMORE Town Council January 18, 2022 Aaron Paramedical completed all of the transports and last week were informed that Strathmore Hospital had be ordered not to use Aaron in the future. Read the letter. Is that fair play or is something else going on? Now read the following news stories from Airdrie. Last week Airdrie Fire transported two patients from two separate calls to the Airdrie Urgent Care in a Fire Truck. IN A FIRE TRUCK. Thats what its come to. https://www.discoverairdrie.com/local/airdrie-fire-department-transports-two- patients-to-urgent-care-no-ambulances-available Mayor and Council, I wish you well. Don Sharpe Paramedic.
  • 6. AHS EMS Presentation to CANMORE Town Council January 18, 2022