Sask. Health Authority working toward 'new era' of ambulance services

The move to asingle health authority in Saskatchewan mighthelp address concerns regarding ambulance services,said RodMacKenzie.

"It's a new era in EMS services," said MacKenzie,executive director of the provincial services and community care sectorwith the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA).

"When you're looking at doing things provincially versus smaller health regions it really changes the conversation."

In December 2017,12 health authorities were converted to a single provincial entity.

Last week, Jacquie Lees shared her concerns on ambulance availability and wait timesin the Yorkton area, after her husband had a heart attack on their farm west of the city.

She said they waited longer thanan hour for an ambulance to transport him from Yorkton to Regina.

Dennis Nelson, the ownerof Yorkton and AreaCrestvue Ambulance Services, saidsituations like that aren't the norm, but said itcould happen again.

"You can only have so many staff sitting around doing nothing waiting for that one call that's going to come in," he said.

"People don't get injured on a regular basis. These are happenings and sometimes they all happen at once, sometimes they don't happen at all."

MacKenzie said the health authority is aware of the situation.

"I spoke with the owner last week and will be meeting, in the next week or two, to do a review and see where the pressures might be and see what we can do to work together to solve them," MacKenzie said.

He said concerns about ambulance services exist throughout the province.

"This isn't specific to Yorkton. We have these issues occurring throughout the province."

There are 104 ambulance services in the the province and about half of them are privately contracted.

MacKenzie said the authority has been developing a template for performance-based contracts one that addresses things like response times for public and private operators.

MacKenzie said SHAhas alsoworked on data collection and what theyneed the operators to report.

MacKenzie said that as the province moves to performance-based contracts,the relationship between the SHA and private ownerswill be "very, very clear."

"We're purchasing a service and with that, we need to know what we're buying and we need to make sure the operators are delivering."

The date for when changes will begin to be implemented has not been set, but MacKenzie said they want an overall plan in place by August.

"Changes will be coming. It will take a little bit of time. Ifthere are pressure points, we're going to address those sooner rather than later."