Four Mayors demand investigation into integrated EMS dispatch

The Mayors of Red Deer, Calgary, Lethbridge and the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo are asking for an independent investigation into the province’s new integrated EMS system, noting technical issues and failures.

The Mayors say that a 45-minute outage on Tuesday of last week occurred. There is no evidence that the outage occurred because of the switch, but these local politicians are calling for all EMS dispatch information to be made public.

“There appears to be no accountability for that failure at a provincial level, and no attempts to work with us and include us in helping to fix these issues,” says Lethbridge Mayor, Chris Spearman

“We were promised by the minister of health. We were promised by the chief paramedic that this would not harm patient outcomes…that citizens would see no difference,” adds Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi “well, waiting 16 minutes for an ambulance when there’s a fire station literally around the corner where people can help you…guess what, that’s a difference”.

Alberta’s Health Minister Tyler Shandro told the four city’s mayors that AHS dispatch is having no problems since taking over last month.