WRHA Pilot Offers Opportunity

Earlier this week the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority and Winnipeg EMS announced a pilot project to help ease service problems associated with increasing offload delays at Winnipeg hospitals. The WRHA will provide funding to place paramedics in Emergency Departments to assume responsibility for patients until care can be transferred to ER personnel. This will allow transporting crews to transfer patient care to waiting paramedics stationed in hospital during peak periods, thus ensuring ambulances aren't tied up for prolonged periods of time as as result of ER backlogs.

In January 2004, then Minister of Health Dave Chomiak announced a formal review of the emergency care system in Winnipeg. The Emergency Care Task Force was mandated to review Winnipeg's ER system and make both short and long term recommendations for improving wait times and back logs associated with emergency rooms across the City. In correspondence sent to Minister Chomiak immediately following the Task Force announcement, the Paramedic Association of Manitoba outlined the benefits of integrating Paramedics into the health care system and better utilizing paramedics within emergency health care to address this issue. Among our recommendations at that time to ease system congestion and better utilize existing resources:

• make use of Advanced and Critical Care Paramedics in emergency care facilities to assist with triage, patient re-evaluation and high workload efforts including resuscitative measures;
• enhance Paramedic treat and release capabilities, resulting in fewer ER admissions;
• enable Paramedics to refer or transport to Urgent Care and other health care facilities as appropriate to reduce ER patient loads.

The joint announcement made by the WRHA and WFPS is good news not only in the sense that it may provide some short term relief to ever increasing ambulance offload delays, but also in that it opens the door to opportunity for development of the profession. In a statement issued by WRHA VP Dr. Brock Wright, he alludes to the pilot project as a means to help offset system delays and better integrate paramedics into the health care system. Paramedics in other Canadian jurisdictions, most notably Alberta, have been utilized in non-traditional health care roles for quite some time.

As our identity as health care practitioners more fully evolves and the credibility of the profession grows, the benefits associated with professional self-regulation strengthen. Paramedics licensed to practice under the umbrella of a regulatory college would be employable outside the realm of an ambulance service...they would hold a license not tied to a specific employer. Opportunities to practice paramedicine in environments such as clinical, industrial or research settings will improve career progression and longevity.

The use of Paramedics in Winnipeg emergency departments will not only offer system improvements and opportunity for professional growth, but also emphasizes the need for professional self-regulation sooner rather than later.