Sir: The Municipality of Chatham-Kent is attempting to create an in-house land ambulance service using the Chatham-Kent Fire Department and its current firefighter personnel.
There is no unequivocal evidence given our council or the public that a proposed blended service would use a required number of provincially certified paramedics, as provided by our current private contracted ambulance services and that which would meet patient safety and service legislation and the criteria to receive the 50% provincial funding. The municipality receives approximately $5 million annually through provincial grants to provide ambulance services. That amount, as provincially required, is then paid directly to the contracted service provider, in this case Medavie.
The 60-plus Medavie employees are all provincially certified, as is mandatory to meet the criteria to receive the described annual funding.
Our fire fighters are not. Chatham-Kent fire department has only six provincially certified medical staff, and those six do not have such intense day-to-day paramedic experience and training, and may not have been re-certified as required.
The municipality publishes, promotes and implies to council and residents their fire department qualifies to receive full funding and hundreds of thousands of tax dollars more from the health minister should the C-K fire department assume the EMS responsibility by turning our firefighters into “fire-medics.”
I submit provincial funding is NOT available, pursuant to the province’s own stated rules, policies and enacted legislation.
Any blending proposal should be in opposite, that is, our EMS services should be entertaining to blend rire with them, since EMS calls make up the majority of the industry respondings.
I further submit, the criteria of the Minister of Health and Long-Term Care funding requirements for land ambulance services is based on and strictly relies upon a full complement of provincially certified personnel, which comprises the current Medavie privately contracted paramedic services. I have found no evidence from the province guaranteeing such provincial funding for municipal fire departments.
The job description and responsibility of a fire fighter and a paramedic are provincially stated and are clear; each has their own list of responsibilities.
Using Toronto as a guide, out of 411 daily calls, only a small percentage are fire calls. The fire industry has experienced an almost 180-degree swing, having 90% of the emergency calls paramedic related.
Chatham-Kent and its council passed resolution for a succession plan, which appears to lay dormant. Policy should be activated to implement municipal employee downsizing through attrition.
Bringing EMS in house could work, but only if proactively planned over the next five or so years by not replacing firefighters when they retire, reducing firefighter numbers and subsequent enormous taxpayer cost, to be more in line with the industry changes to the number of much fewer fire-related occurrences. However, a more defined blended and triaged fire-paramedic service to best designate who responds to various emergency and fire calls, while maintaining a separate EMS service, is by far the best option, easiest to manage, least expensive and most effective, allowing millions to be saved.
Those savings would allow Chatham-Kent to apply for reduction on taxes, paving a way for a rebuild of our economy. Our current private EMS contractor is not a direct taxpayer funded burden; a blended in-house service would be a huge taxpayer expense, not only to implement but to sustain each year.
One municipal employee with a $90,000 base salary, carries a 28.7% added taxpayer cost for pension, medical, training, holiday, sick days, liability, insurances, etc. Our current Medavie ambulance provider assumes these and many other costs under their own private company, not taxpayers.
An EMS blended service also carries an increase in insurance premiums at taxpayer’s expense. Why would C-K want to make any changes to our EMS services from the current model?
John Cryderman
Chatham
