The Foothills Regional 911 Commission (FRESC) is continuing to pressure the NDP Government to take action on call transfer times.

FRESC is calling for Alberta Health Minister Sarah Hoffman to do more than monitor the emergency dispatch process, which has seen long lag times between calls being received and first responders arriving on scene.

On May 9, Minister Hoffman had promised to monitor the situation with the Alberta Health Services dispatch centre, according to FRESC only five per cent of emergency calls requiring medical response are being sent to Foothills 911 within the industry standard time frames.

Jamie Tiessen, Foothills Regional 911 Commission Vice-Chair, says there have been at least five calls in May well over the industry standard time frame of 90 seconds, including a call on May 17, which took 21 minutes 42 seconds to transfer.

He says this shows nothing has improved, and encourages Minister Hoffman to have discussions with FRESC directly.

"At this point in time nothing seems to have changed, the situation remains the same, there are a number of times where call transfer time don't meet any reasonable standard," he explains. "Nobody is being held accountable for their inability to transfer these calls so we can get municipal first response to residents in our communities in a timely manner."

In a release FRESC reported three startling recent incidents:

Witnessed Cardiac Arrest: CPR in progress by bystanders, ambulance response 20 minutes from another
community. Delay requesting local Fire Medical Response 3 minutes 41 seconds.

Trauma with Serious Bleeding: Ambulance response from another community with a 30 minute response time.
Fire Medical Response delayed 9 minutes and 25 seconds.

Ranching Accident – Severe Trauma: Error in ambulance dispatch - appropriate ambulance not dispatched for
22 minutes and 6 seconds. Fire medical response on scene 14 minutes prior to ambulance. Total response
time for ambulance was 45 minutes 22 seconds to a location 22 minutes from an ambulance station.

Tiessen says FRESC continues to lobby and work with various municipalities, as well as the Mayors and Reeves of Southwest Alberta, they're all calling on Minister Hoffman to take immediate action to restore Foothills emergency services medical dispatch to a local single point dispatch.

"We want to have some form of immediate action to reduce the call transfer times, we've got a busy season for first responders as we head into the summer holidays. With no action the commission continues to see no one at AHS held accountable for the actions of delayed transfer times, it's just simply unacceptable."

To learn more on FRESC and their battle for single point medical dispatch in the Foothills click here.

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