Lethbridge City Council advocates for deeper look into EMS dispatch options

Lethbridge City Council has its eyes focused up north. The Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo recently decided to attempt to opt out of the centralized EMS dispatch within the province of Alberta. City Council told the City Manager Tuesday night to gather more information about Lethbridge potentially doing the same.

Some options that Lethbridge City Council are looking at exploring include

• The City of Lethbridge potentially opting out of centralized dispatch
• Figuring out if would be a good idea to join in on the legal case that the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo is undertaking
• Keeping a close eye on future legal meetings between Alberta Health and the RMWB

Last August, Alberta Health Services decided to centralized all EMS dispatch within the province.

Since January 12 of this year, Lethbridge has had all of their outgoing 911 ambulance calls redirected to a call centre within Calgary.

The City of Lethbridge says that locally, addresses have been wrong when they are relayed over to EMS crews, which caused delays.

In a report on the City of Lethbridge website, it says that there will need to be more firefighters hired because of a lack of support from EMS teams.

This will cost the city an estimated $5-million.

To learn more about this new centralized dispatch system, you can visit https://www.lethbridge.ca/living-here/Emergency-Services/Lethbridge-Fire/Pages/City-Impact-EMS-Dispatch.aspx