Mayor Naheed Nenshi says he’s concerned that a coming change to 911 services in the City of Calgary could slow down response times.
Right now, the city oversees dispatching fire, police, and ambulance services but, starting next year, the Alberta Health Services will take control of ambulances.
The AHS says that the new technology and staff training available to them with actually improve response times for paramedics, but the mayor isn’t so sure.
He wrote a letter to the Health Minister, saying that transferring calls between dispatch centres in the city and with AHS could slow down the process.
One Calgary realtor who suffered a heart attack two years ago says the current system works and doesn’t want it to undergo a big change.
“I wouldn’t want to see them tinker with it and change it and make you have to do something different or go through some extra steps, definitely not. The system works fine, don’t break it,” says Gary Williamson.
Officials with the AHS are standing by their training program and say technology will make the difference to ensure ambulances are dispatched quickly. “We have a training program that we put all of our staff through that we’ve found has been very effective. We also have a computer-aided dispatch which is different technology than the current City of Calgary dispatch methodology, with those efficiencies, we can get the ambulance dispatched quicker.”
The Health Minister says he will be meeting with Nenshi to listen to his concerns in the next few weeks.
