Niagara MPP Urging Province to Address Health Care Issues Affecting Niagara

Officials say Niagara needs help addressing long EMS off-load delays

Niagara's three NDP MPPs are calling on the Ford government to increase support for health care in Niagara. 

Wayne Gates, Jennie Stevens and Jeff Burch say the region is facing an increasing number of ambulance offload delays. 

We spoke to Burch, who says the problem is not only costly, but also dangerous for patients. 

"(Last year), we lost so many hours due to offload delays, that it added up to 24 paramedics for 365 days. That's how many offload hours that we stacked up. That means that people are waiting in the ambulances. They're not getting into operating rooms or emergency rooms in time."

He also notes Niagara's EMS workers are facing a lot of other pressures on the job, due in part to local emergency room closures. 

"When you have a situation like you do in Niagara, with emergency services being withdrawn as well, and they've indicated that after hours and weekend operating visits, in Welland they've already been cancelled, so that places additional stress on EMS as well."

The MPPs are asking Premier Doug Ford to reimburse the region for $1.7 million spent to mitigate ambulance offload delays, as well as an additional health team to address some of the underlying issues causing offload delays. 

This comes as delegates from the Niagara Region are in Queen's Park this week to discuss similar issues with cabinet ministers. 

In response to concerns about offload times in Niagara, the Ministry of Health sent the following comment:

"Our government’s four-part strategy to tackle ambulance offload time issues is focused on: returning ambulances to communities faster, providing timely and appropriate care in the community, facilitating non-ambulance transportation for stable patients, and increasing health care worker capacity. All of this with the goal of improving patient flow in hospital, reducing ambulance offload time, and avoiding unnecessary trips to emergency departments. It is why we have invested an additional $51 million, as part of this year's budget, in the Dedicated Offload Nursing Program, allowing paramedics to get back into communities faster and expanding 9-1-1 models of care to empower paramedics to provide more appropriate and timely care in the community. 

Our government continues to work in partnership with Niagara EMS to provide the support they need to maintain ambulance availability in their community. This includes providing over $26 million in funding for their Land Ambulance Services Grant and nearly $1 million in funding in 2022/23 for the Dedicated Offload Nurses Program, which has estimated to increase ambulance availability by almost 10,000 hours across the region.