An advocate for improving Alberta's EMS system is helping groups get established across the province to make it happen.

Don Sharpe says ambulances are piling up at emergency department's in Calgary, leaving the surrounding rural communities without the level of service they need.

He calls the current situation "tragic and dire" and says we can't let the way it's run continue and the people who are running it shouldn't be able to run it the way they are.

He says people are literally dying because of the way the service is being run.

"I'm hearing stories of a car crash on Highway 2 south of Okotoks, first in ambulance coming from Strathmore," he says. "I know a couple of days ago you had Kananaskis responding to High River, Kananaskis, from their base in Kananaskis, that was the closest truck."

He says the first problem is ambulances waiting at hospitals to drop off patients, claiming by noon there can be 20 or 30 with ambulances from Okotoks, High River, Vulcan, Claresholm, Cochrane and Strathmore being called out of their communities to cover for them.

He says an ambulance based in Vulcan was in the city for 14 hours before it could return, leaving the town without service for all that time and the ambulance was shut down the next day.

The Health Science Association of Alberta has started posting which ambulances are being called into the city and which communities are left without coverage.

He says rural communities are putting together plans to fight for their rights to proper care and their MLA's are supporting them.

"We want them (communities) to form Citizen Action Groups and lots of these groups are now including town councillors, even the mayors of these communities, prominent business leaders, paramedics, the Fire Chief is on board in most of these places and they're going to get together and determine what the problem is and what they can do about it." 

Sharpe says inter-hospital transfers can be taken care of by non-essential transports and some are already being done by private services because the Alberta Ambulance Transfer Service can't keep up.

"There's too much evidence now that things aren't working and for people in charge of this service to keep telling Albertans, especially rural Albertans, that everything's fine is wrong and frankly some of us who've got some experience have now decided enough's enough," Sharpe says.

Some communities, he says, are looking at taking drastic action to keep ambulances in their communities.

Further meetings are planned including one in High River near the middle of September.

 

Questions, comments or story ideas? e-mail news@highriveronline.com