Paramedics endorse NDP plan

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Paramedics are backing a plan by the Manitoba NDP to open three Winnipeg emergency departments and its promise to hire 200 new emergency medical responders.

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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/09/2023 (767 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Paramedics are backing a plan by the Manitoba NDP to open three Winnipeg emergency departments and its promise to hire 200 new emergency medical responders.

On Friday, Paramedic Association of Manitoba administrative director Rebecca Clifton endorsed the NDP’s commitment to open three new emergency departments, including one at Seven Oaks Hospital, within the next eight years. PAM is a professional association and advocacy group for paramedics and emergency medical responders.

“We are pleased to see the NDP’s commitment to reopen these fully staffed ERs,” Clifton said alongside NDP Leader Wab Kinew outside Seven Oaks Hospital in northwest Winnipeg.

Rebecca Clifton, administrative director for the Paramedic Association of Manitoba (Jesse Boily / Winnipeg Free Press files)

Rebecca Clifton, administrative director for the Paramedic Association of Manitoba (Jesse Boily / Winnipeg Free Press files)

“The communities in these areas, both within the Perimeter (Highway) and outside of the Perimeter, are expanding rapidly,” Clifton said. “There are new citizens every day in this province, and they’re lacking these services. They deserve to have access to this level of care close to them.”

Clifton argued additional ERs in Winnipeg will reduce the time paramedics spend waiting to offload patients at Health Sciences Centre or St. Boniface Hospital.

“Paramedics are sitting in these hallways for numerous hours, and your community is now six to eight hours without an ambulance and without those paramedics,” Clifton said.

While the association supports the NDP’s emergency department and paramedic hiring plan, Clifton said the group has not endorsed a political party.

“We are looking to understand the concrete plans from each political party and how they’re going to support paramedics in Manitoba,” Clifton said, adding health-care workers have experienced the “worst conditions that they will ever face” in the past seven years.

“This is a time where people who if you’re not political, it’s a time to get political.”

Kinew committed Friday to hiring 200 more paramedics within four years if the party wins the Oct. 3 general election.

“We’re going to hire more paramedics, so that when you dial 911 you’re going to get a response more quickly,” he said.

Money to pay the additional paramedics is already in the provincial budget when accounting for vacancies and what is spent on overtime for emergency medical responders, Kinew argued.

“This is going to be a cost-neutral investment. What we’re committing to with this team is that we’re actually going to get the job done,” he said.

Kinew pledged earlier this week to open emergency departments at the Victoria, Concordia and Seven Oaks hospitals.

The Progressive Conservative government shuttered the emergency rooms and converted them to urgent care centres between 2017 and 2019.

Kinew said the reopening plan would take up to eight years, or two terms in office to complete, and each emergency department could cost up to $150 million to build.

The construction of emergency departments would be contingent on the government hiring nurses, doctors and other medical professionals to staff the facilities.

The NDP has pledged to hire 300 nurses to work in Winnipeg within two years of forming government.

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