There is a new plan in place to ensure there are always ambulances available to dispatch in Waterloo Region, not stuck in line at local hospitals.
It has been a busy winter for area emergency rooms, leaving ambulances backed up at hospitals waiting to unload patients.
It has been so busy that a 'Code Red,' when no ambulance is available to respond to a call, occurred once every two days. There were also days when no local ambulance was available for up to two hours.
In an attempt to avoid more situations where ambulance must be called in from neighbouring regions, hospitals will be notified when there are only three ambulances left on the road.
John Prno, director of Region of Waterloo Emergency Medical Services, says "The hospitals have agreed at that point, they'll release one ambulance from offload delay on a rotating basis. Each hospital will release one every 20 minutes until the 'Code Yellow' situation is resolved."
The system won't give priority treatment to people arriving in ambulances, Prno says, because it doesn't change the triage assessment in the emergency room.
In their own way, each hospital will need to find the space for more patients.
Sue Robertson, VP of clinical programs at Grand River Hospital, says it will help the system.
Robertson says "Sometimes we may be able to do that, we may be able to send somebody up to a unit a little bit earlier, add another stretcher into the emergency department if we've got the staff to do that."
At St. Mary's General Hospital they believe they'll be ready by Friday, they're just waiting for some additional equipment like stretchers.
Sandra Hett, VP of patient services at St. Mary's, says "There's several strategies and the one that we're looking at right now is having the paramedics safely look after two patients so that the other crew can get back out to the community."
'Code Yellow' will be introduced as a trial for the month of April. Other changes may also be implemented as hospitals and emergency services review their operations. Opening urgent care clinics for less seriously ill patients is also an option.
