Emergency Medical Services
Provincial Standards
The EMS program is accountable to legislated standards in the Ambulance Act and Regulations which sets out standards regarding paramedic employment criteria, vehicles, equipment standards, training and certification, medical control, documentation and dispatch call handling. The EMS program must also meet Ministry of Health provincial certification standards and undergoes an in-depth review of is operations every three years.
Call Volume
Annual call volume has remained relatively unchanged since 2005. Calls consist of non-emergency calls such as patient transfers for medical appointments, emergency life threatening calls and standby calls designed to move available ambulance resources within the District to ensure emergency coverage is maintained while other District ambulances are busy.
2010 District Call Volume| Non-Emergency Calls | 1981 |
| Emergency Calls | 2701 |
| Standby Calls | 1855 |
| Total | 6537 |
Ambulance Response Times
Currently in place are response time standards that represent 90% of the call volume that this service responds to. Each community served has a response time standard that indicates the average response time (90%) for emergency calls.
| Kirkland Lake (North Station) | 21.56 minutes |
| Englehart (Central) | 30 minutes |
| Temiskaming Shores (South) | 15.25 minutes |
These times reflect and overall response time average to all emergencies and is to be taken into consideration for all calls regardless of actual location as rural call involve significant travel time to arrive at the call location. At the same time call received within a community with an ambulance station located in close proximity may have significantly quicker response times.
Early in 2012 Ontario EMS services will be moving to a new response time standard that is designed to more realistically reflect emergency response to victims of cardiac arrest. This new standard will reflect the average response as a percentage of occasions that this service is able to respond to a single response time standard. Once the DSSAB Board has approved a revised standard for Timiskaming District the revised standard will be updated onto this web site.
