In January 2022, Airdrie’s paramedics, both primary care paramedics and advanced care paramedics clocked 119.2 hours of overtime in the Calgary zone, which serves approximately 1.6 million people; this is according to documents (2022-G-035) received by Discover Airdrie through The Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FOIP). The documents show that the overtime hours were either paid or 'banked' meaning that the overtime hours can be used in lieu of vacation or other discretionary time off at a later date if they have saved up 12 hours worth.
A standard shift for paramedics is 12 hours long. The longest recorded overtime this year was on January 1st, 2022, with overtime being 2.25 hours, meaning that the paramedics on that call were working 14.25 hours. It should be noted that it is not possible to know where this overtime was spent, considering Airdrie is part of the Calgary zone. The average overtime hours for 2022 thus far are approximately 0.99 hours.
However, in previous reports and through documents also obtained via FOIP (2022-G-023), Discover Airdrie reported that in January 2022, Airdrie ambulances responded to 821 calls, with 564 of those calls being in Calgary, while 186 were in Airdrie, while the remaining 71 calls included other municipalities. There were also 33 relocation requests for Airdrie EMS to Calgary in January 2022. The total hours of both off Load Delay or Transfer of Care Status totalled 136.82 hours that month.
Documents from the most recent FOIP request show that there has been an exponential increase in Airdrie’s EMS crews doing overtime hours since 2016. In the last two months of 2016, Airdrie EMS crews amassed 39.72 hours of overtime, with an average of 0.92 hours of overtime during that year. One year later, in 2017, those overtime hours totalled 239.82 hours. The average overtime also rose slightly to 1.07 hours.
The overtime hours continued to climb in 2018, more than doubling the previous year’s overtime hours to 645.77 total overtime hours, though the average time for overtime dropped slightly back down to 0.96 hours.
By 2019, Airdrie paramedics had accumulated 735.85 overtime hours, with the longest overtime being 4.50 hours on April 27th, 2019.
The longest overall overtime recorded was in 2020, at five hours, meaning a 17-hour shift for Airdrie paramedics on October 31st, 2020. That year, Airdrie paramedics completed 1228.47 hours of overtime.
2021 saw the largest amount of overtime recorded overall, with 1513.68 hours of overtime, with four hours being the longest overtime on June 14th, 2021 and also on June 15th with another four hours.
Since 2016, Airdrie’s paramedics have seen their overtime hours increase by approximately 38 times, though the average overtime hasn’t changed dramatically. Between 2016 and 2022, Airdrie’s Emergency Medical Services accumulated 4522.50 overtime hours, averaging 0.96 hours of overtime during those years.
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