Ontario will be pitching in $31,409,881 for land ambulances in Simcoe County this year, which is about $2 million more than last year.
A joint news release from Simcoe County MPPs promised a six per cent increase to the land ambulance funding for the year, and also $245,280 in funding for dedicated offload nurses.
Last year the county received $1,263,091 for the offload nurses program.
The dedicated offload nurses program was created to hire nurses and other health professionals whose job it is to offload ambulance patients in hospital emergency departments. Ambulances and the paramedics on them have to wait until a patient is transferred to the hospital's emergency department before responding to any more 911 calls.
This funding program is the province's answer to increasing offload times in Ontario, which peaked in October, 2022 with an average of around 31 minutes province-wide.
Data obtained from Ontario Health through freedom of information requests shows the average has come down to about 23 minutes by May, 2024. The median offload time in May in the province is 14 minutes. More recent data was not available
The news release from MPPs Doug Downey (Barrie-Springwater-Oro-Medonte), Jill Dunlop (Simcoe-North), Andrea Khanjin (Barrie-Innisfil), Caroline Mulroney (York-Simcoe) and Brian Saunderson (Simcoe-Grey) notes a reduction in offload times of "more than 50 per cent" since Oct. 2022, "as a result of this investment and the dedication of health-care professionals."
“When it comes to emergency care, we know time is of the essence and seconds count,” said Simcoe-Grey MPP Brian Saunderson in the news release. “This investment will give our vital front-line emergency care teams even more tools to better treat patients faster and effectively.”
The province also notes the implementation of the new medical priority dispatch system is over a year ahead of schedule. The system is designed to improve prioritization and triage of emergency medical calls and to dispatch paramedics sooner.
The medical priority system is already in place in Mississauga, Kenora, Thunder Bay, Ottawa, and Renfrew, with plans to "accelerate" the installation at the remaining 15 dispatch sites in the province.
