The union representing almost 6,000 ambulance paramedics and dispatchers in British Columbia is sounding an alarm on staffing levels “reaching critical” in the province.
In a statement, the Ambulance Paramedics of British Columbia CUPE 873 says members are reporting “dozens and dozens” of empty ambulances, with “hundreds” of unfilled positions across the province.
Union president Jason Jackson said in the statement that workers have tried to engage with B.C. Emergency Health Services (BCEHS), which imposed an overtime ban on Jan. 1 to cut costs.
Jackson says the ban has resulted in cuts to staffing as well as slower response times, and as much as 25 per cent of ambulances in B.C. are “commonly unstaffed” on a daily basis.
He says emergency calls for people in non-critical conditions may be waiting for an ambulance “for a long time,” given the current staffing conditions.
B.C. Conservative rural health-care critic Brennan Day says in a statement that the staffing shortage is a “public safety crisis,” and he’s calling on the NDP government to do more to support paramedics and rural communities that depend on them.
In a statement, the Provincial Health Services Authority, which represents BCEHS, said that it closely monitors staffing levels across B.C. and takes action to fill vacant shifts as quickly as it can.
But the paramedics say BCEHS isn’t pre-scheduling overtime as it used to do, and instead calls paramedics and dispatchers in a “panic” to try to fill what it says are “obvious and predictable vacancies immediately before, or during the shift, with little success.”
BCEHS said that it has paid for overtime hours over the past week and that “recent in-service trends are consistent over the past few months.”
It says when it has ambulances that are out of service, it can dispatch ambulances from surrounding areas.