Ambulance backlog at The Ottawa Hospital
Posted Mar 4, 2020 11:25:00 AM.
Ottawa's paramedic association is blaming the hospital for a backlog of ambulances and paramedic teams, waiting to offload patients at the General.
The Professional Paramedic Association of Ottawa tweeted video of the ambulance backlog, Tuesday evening.
Offload delays have over 18 paramedic units from throughout Eastern Ontario stuck inside & outside @OttawaHospital General Campus managing emerg patients.
One hospital is putting all of Eastern Ontario in a very dangerous predicament. #ottnews @celliottability pic.twitter.com/bMtdUqyGKn
— OttawaParamedics.ca (@Ottawa_9_1_1) March 3, 2020
The paramedic association says the Civic notified paramedics that it was enacting a redirect protocol, and was no longer accepting ambulances. About half of the ambulances waiting at the General would have been redirected from the Civic, the association says.
“The problem is the General could not process that volume of patients because their emergency department was actually log jammed with a greater number of admitted patients who were waiting to be accepted on the floors,” Darryl Wilton, president, Professional Paramedic Association of Ottawa, wrote in an e-mail.
The Ottawa Hospital says there has been a greater than usual number of people at the hospital's emergency departments, but says patients received timely access to care based on clinical assessment.
“Five vehicles arrived within a 45 minute window,” said a written statement from The Ottawa Hospital. “Volume was up last night across the region. Hospitals have been working together with paramedics to manage the volume.”
Recent changes by the province have allowed paramedics to take less-severe patients to facilities other than a hospital emergency room. However, the problem of ambulances being delayed in offloading patients, and the resulting low levels of available ambulances, have been an ongoing issue in Ottawa and its neighbouring counties.
The union representing the province's paramedics was scheduled to release a report on the issue of ambulance shortages in Ontario, Wednesday morning, in Toronto.
