Rural paramedic staffing ‘chaos’ as people quit

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This article was published 07/01/2022 (1534 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Rural paramedics are quitting and entering other professions due to chronic understaffing that their union blames on changes to Manitoba health care.

“Our system has been leaned out to a razor’s edge,” said Bob Moroz, president of the Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals.

“It is chaos, and it’s immensely stressful on those paramedics who want nothing more than to be able to respond to that call in a very reasonable time.”

New data shows ambulances in Manitoba are idle due to a lack of personnel.

A statistics report for last October issued by the Medical Transportation Co-ordination Centre, the command centre for almost all ambulances outside of Winnipeg, was obtained by the union.

The data show a steep rise in the hours out-of-service metric, which is the amount of time an ambulance is supposed to be on rotation, but does not have the legislated requirement of having a two-person crew available.

That metric has tripled since March 2020, when COVID-19 took hold in Manitoba, until October 2021.

“There is not an option to not respond to emergencies, so the system cascades on every single member who’s out there,” said Moroz, whose union represents more than 800 rural paramedics.

“It is certainly showing a really disturbing and frightening trend, that we’ve been talking about for a long, long time already.”

The number of hours ambulances could not be deployed had dropped after the PCs took office in 2016 — and Shared Health noted that in that time, it added 149.2 full-time equivalent paramedic positions.

Despite those hires, the total hours that Manitoba was able to deploy rural ambulances dropped by five per cent since late 2016, which suggests the system has operated on a skeleton crew for several years.

Moroz chalks that up to a thinning out of the health service before COVID-19 wreaked havoc and staff absences soared, followed by the decision by health officials to shuffle patients around the province last fall to make room for COVID-19 cases.

For example, rural paramedic calls in October 2021 were equally split between interfacility transfers and primary response calls. Moroz said there should generally be more responses to emergencies than transfers.

Although Shared Health would not say whether that’s a normal ratio, it acknowledged the system does not have enough employees.

“Staffing of emergency response services has long been a challenge in some rural parts of the province, with efforts underway to recruit staff to provide 24/7 paramedic coverage in order to reduce Manitoba’s reliance on overtime or on-call staffing,” wrote spokesman Jason Permanand.

“As COVID has progressed, existing staff vacancies have been exacerbated at various points in time by staff sick calls and individuals who are unable to work either due to COVID-19 diagnosis, symptoms or exposure,” he wrote.

Ambulances are still available, he insisted.

The agency said Manitoba has tried to improve the situation by contracting out some transportation, dispatching ambulances from different regions and allowing trainees to do more shifts alongside fully qualified staff.

Moroz said Health Minister Audrey Gordon needs to add surge capacity, instead of requiring ambulances to travel long distances to fill gaps in other regions. Her office noted she met with the union, and responded to a letter outlining their concerns.

“We encourage them to continue working with Shared Health on these matters, as they are the employer,” reads a statement attributed to Gordon.

NDP Leader Wab Kinew said the PCs need to take control of the situation, instead of letting Shared Health tinker with technical adjustments.

“There really is no way around this other than to add staff,” he said, arguing rural health outcomes will otherwise only get worse.

“This is an ambulance shortage from a staffing crunch the province should have seen coming.”

Moroz said the province might have missed an opportunity to address the issue in the summer, when the hours ambulances could not be staffed seemed to plateau as COVID-19 cases dropped.

Instead of that metric falling, it shot up last fall, according to data Moroz noted provincial officials would have received. The Omicron variant has undoubtedly worsened the staffing shortage since October.

“Manitobans don’t need spin; they need action,” he said.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca