Thread by @albertaNDP

EMS red alerts spiked in Alberta last year with both major cities running out of ambulances to respond to emergencies roughly every 90 minutes, documents show. 🧵

#ableg #abhealth #yeg #yyc

According to a Freedom of Information request obtained by Alberta’s NDP, Calgary and Edmonton saw 2,276 EMS Red Alerts between August 1, 2021 and December 6, 2021, an average of over 17 Red Alerts per day.

This is a significant increase when compared to nine Red Alerts a day on average in Calgary in 2020, or two per day on average in Calgary in 2018.

Red alerts are the code used by Alberta Health Services to describe times when there are no ambulances available to respond to emergency calls.

Albertans need to know that when they are in distress and call 911 that an ambulance will reach them as quickly as possible. The fact that an ambulance wasn’t available almost every hour of the day in our province’s two major cities is severely alarming.

The pressure on EMS has risen during the pandemic, but also as a result of the UCP government’s changes to ambulance dispatch services and their consistent attacks on frontline health care, including their war with doctors and health care professionals.

The impact has been felt across the province from cancelled surgeries to closed emergency rooms, and the UCP’s continued mishandling of the pandemic has created a severe strain on Alberta’s ambulance system.

Speaking to the Legislature on November 30, 2021, Jason Kenney defended the UCP changes to EMS and claimed there had been an “abatement” in EMS calls. However, AHS records show the number of Red Alerts increased by 120—or 32 per cent—in Calgary and Edmonton that same month.