Wait times are getting longer for ambulances in Toronto

Torontonians who called an ambulance for a medical emergency waited longer on average last year than before the pandemic, according to a new report from the city’s Auditor General Tara Anderson.

According to it, average response times for an ambulance are increasing due to staffing challenges and pressures on the health system.

Toronto City Council’s audit committee will review the report on Friday, July 5.

Rapid ambulance response in an emergency is crucial, especially for people with medical problems requiring urgent attention in hospitalwe read in the report.

Every second counts for paramedics, especially when it comes to life and death.

The report, published this week, contains 10 recommendations to improve the efficiency of ambulance services.

Ms Anderson recommends, among other things, that the service review its response time targets, report on its performance by geographic area and explore strategies to better manage demand for its services.

She also proposes developing a plan to redirect some mental health-related calls, with the help of Toronto Police and Toronto Community Crisis Services, improving data analysis on frequent 911 users and determine the optimal number of ambulances needed to meet its needs.

Patient treatment times

The report said response times for life-threatening cases and even very serious cases, i.e. calls deemed a priority according to a triage tool, were both higher in 2023 than in 2019.

For life-threatening and critically ill patients, average overall response times were 6% and 14% higher in 2023 than in 2019, respectively.

In 2023, for example, the average ambulance response time for a cardiac arrest call was 6 minutes, while the average response time for very serious cases was 6 minutes and 47 seconds.

Several factors contributed to the increase in average response times, the main ones being ambulance wait times at hospitals for patients to be admitted (known as offload delays) and staffing challenges. Other factors include traffic congestion and the presence of new dispatchers and call takers in training.the report says.

The report also found that the number and duration of episodes where there was low availability of ambulances staffed by two paramedics is increasing. The number of episodes increased from 1,300 in 2019 to 6,800 in 2023, according to the report.

According to the report, paramedics spent 60% of their hours on duty in hospitals in 2023, and this trend is increasing. The report indicates that in 42% of cases, it took more than 30 minutes to discharge patients at hospitals.

Better response times downtown

Interestingly, the report indicates that response times for high-priority calls were better for patients in downtown Toronto than for those who lived outside the city center.

This finding comes as call volume increased by 6% from 2019 to 2023, the report said.

Faced with health system pressures, including delays in offloading at hospitals, we have seen more frequent and longer episodes of low availability of staffed ambulances to respond to the increasing number of emergency callsconcludes the report.

As for staffing challenges, the report says they can be problematic at times of highest demand, such as weekends, after 9 p.m. on weekdays, and during the summer and fall.

The report notes that the Toronto ambulance communications centre handles about 910 emergency calls per day. Of the 22 ambulance communications centres in Ontario, Toronto’s is the busiest, receiving about 16 per cent of Ontario’s medical emergency calls, the report says.

With information from Muriel Draaisma, from CBC