Dear Editor:
Re: Change stirs up fears, The Record, Jan. 24.
There are a few glaring details that need to be corrected in this story. The B.C. Ambulance Service does regularly update its resource allocation plan in an effort to have the proper resources respond to a call. Example: if there's a big motor vehicle accident, having fire trucks, ambulances and police all respond is prudent. When someone has chronic back pain that is ongoing for months, sending a four-man fire truck along with an ambulance is impractical. The resource plan is devised based on historical data and morbidity rates.
Coun. Chuck Puchmayr believes the proposal is an attempt to reduce calls and offload to fire departments. There are currently no calls that are not attended to by the B.C. Ambulance Service; it is just the response time that is being affected. When in fact, the vast majority of the calls that have been changed from Code 3 (lights and sirens) to Code 2 (normal response), the fire departments are not required on these calls.
Coun. Betty McIntosh's view that some calls don't require an ambulance lights and sirens is indeed correct - the majority of "medical assist" calls that fire trucks respond to, they are not required and they do very little in the way of patient care.
Coun. Bill Harper states the fire chief voiced concerns (He said some calls now being serviced by ambulances wouldn't be in the future) - this is entirely false. All calls will always be attended by the B.C. Ambulance Service, it is just the response time that will change.
Harper also says that fire trucks will be on the road more as they will be responding to calls that "would have been" served by B.C. Ambulance; again there are no calls the ambulance service will not attend to, so the call volume for fire departments has not changed.
Part of the long-term plan for the changes was to remove the fire departments from even responding to these medical calls because statistics show that they are not needed, nor have any impact on patient care. However, due to political wrangling from the Fire Chiefs Association and B.C. Ambulance management, fire trucks still continue to respond to medical assist calls in an attempt to keep their call volume numbers up - which ultimately support their increasing budgets.
I do hope a representative from the B.C. Ambulance Service will attend a future council meeting to help clear up some of the misinformation that is being presented to the public.
Edward Roberts, by email
