According to data obtained from Alberta Health Services Emergency Medical Services (EMS) by Discover Airdrie, in 2021, one of the longest Airdrie EMS response times was logged at one hour in October of last year. This response interval was meant for an ‘Echo’ emergency, which is a code reserved for the highest priorities such as patients needing CPR or drowning for example. 

The data also shows that in 2021 Airdrie EMS unit response interval times for emergencies (Bravo- serious injuries but not necessarily life-threatening, Charlie - seizures, overdoses, abdominal pain, Delta- heart attack, difficult breathing, serious bleeding and Echo) all of which warrant a ‘lights and sirens’ response, averaged anywhere between 13 and 15 minutes, though these are averages calculated from each average of each month of the year. The average response time for echo events exclusively was 13 and a half minutes.  

However, if one were to look at the average longest response times between January 2021 and December 2021, Airdrie EMS response times averaged 53 minutes for Bravo emergencies, 54 minutes for Charlie emergencies, and just over 30 minutes for Echo emergencies. The average longest response time for all emergencies across the board was approximately 34 minutes.  

The data represented the unit response interval for units stationed in Airdrie regardless of the scene location of the event. The data that was received via a Freedom of Information request states that the chart, “does not represent the response interval for events in the City of Airdrie nor does it represent the response interval for the events the Airdrie units responded to as there may have been non-Airdrie units that arrived on the scene earlier.” This means that the data provided encompasses only emergencies that were assigned to Airdrie EMS. 

Previously, it was reported that between January 2021 and January 2022, Airdrie EMS responded to 7,666 emergency events in Calgary out of a total of 12,474 calls, meaning that Airdrie EMS responded to over 60 per cent of emergency calls to Calgary and only 30 percent in Airdrie. 

According to the data that Discover Airdrie has obtained, median response times for Bravo emergencies for December 2021 were 12 minutes, 17 minutes for Charlie emergencies, 15 minutes for Delta emergencies and 12 minutes for Echo emergencies. The average median for all emergencies is 14 minutes. 

Between 2017 and 2021 the average response times for emergencies have not changed drastically, though Discover Airdrie calculated that in 2019, the average response time for an echo event was 18 minutes, which was the longest average response time, second longest only to 2021, in the given time frame.  

It should be noted that according to publicly available data from Alberta Health Services illustrated the median response time for Airdrie EMS, which the time at which half the response times are above and half are below at 10 minutes in December 2021.  

AHS public data also illustrates the 90th percentile response time, meaning that 90 per cent of calls are answered within this time frame averaged just under 25 minutes in December 2021. Though the remaining 10 percent of calls may be responded to under 25 minutes or over. According to the data that Discover Airdrie obtained, the longest response time in December 2021 was 31 minutes.  

 

Send your news tips, story ideas, pictures, and videos to news@discoverairdrie.com  

Related Stories