Stettler and area residents may see improved Emergency Medical Services (EMS) response times.
The Alberta Medical First Response (MFR) Program is working with Stettler County and Town of Stettler to train more firefighters to be medical first responders.
“There are a lot of people provincially concerned about response times,” said Natasha Schiebelbein, a strategist for MFR, during Stettler County’s regular meeting April 11.
Schiebelbein said their goal isn’t to supplement ambulances through fire services.
“What we want to do is make sure we have trained personnel on scene in a timely manner until we can get an ambulance there.”
Ambulances often leave the area they are based, which means communities are left without any ambulances locally.
Stettler Regional Fire Chief Mark Dennis said if there are no ambulances in Stettler area the fire department will respond.
Last month the Health Sciences Association of Alberta (HSAA) released statistics they obtained from Alberta Health Services through the Freedom of Information request that showed Alberta’s EMS system is in crisis.
“Our paramedic members across the province have been saying for a long time that front-line resources have failed to keep up with demand,” said Mike Parker, president of HSAA, which represents more than 25,000 health-care professionals, including about 3,400 paramedics.
“When Albertans, including children, experience a medical emergency, they need and deserve to have appropriate care.”
MFR provides free medical direction to its member agencies, saving them money. Schiebelbein said it could cost a municipality upwards of six figures for their own medical director.
“We are standardizing the level of care on scene and making sure fire services are comfortable with the level of care.”
Dennis said the director will provide medical oversight of the patient care reports.
“If something is done wrong or needs to be done better, we will have medical oversight we never had before. I think this is a great thing.”
In addition, the MFR program provides financial support to municipalities because the agency gets a $100,000 grant each year. They were giving participating members $3,000 towards training and equipment but are reducing that to $2,000.
“We have a lot of agencies and want to help as many agencies as we can. It’s an ongoing fund.”
Dennis said the fire department will be able to utilize their EMS staff who are able to train others in CPR and First Aid.
“We don’t have to farm this training out.”
Dennis said the fire department has filled out the forms for the MFR Program and they will tweak their response protocols.
Stettler Regional Fire Rescue covers both the county and town of Stettler. They have about 23 volunteer firefighters.