(File photo/paNOW Staff)

By Susan McNeil

Budget 2022

EMS gets budget boost of $10.8m

Mar 24, 2022 | 4:00 PM

Much of the $10.8 million allocated to emergency medical services announced in yesterday’s provincial budget will go to hire more paramedics.

About $7 million will be spent adding full time equivalent positions in rural and remote areas of Saskatchewan, said Steven Skoworodko, head of the Paramedic Chiefs of Saskatchewan.

While the organization did not know all the details ahead of time, they have been working to bring issues to the attention of the province, including the need for more staff.

“It just helps recruiting and retaining some of those paramedics in rural Saskatchewan,” Skoworodko said.

This means some rural services that have only on-call staff may now be able to have increased hours of availability.

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“That’s a great step. There’s a lot of ambulance services that aren’t given even full-time wages. People there are based on-call,” he said.

Some of the funding will also pay for paramedicine, a growing method of health care delivery. Paramedics can be called to use skills in ways they haven’t in the past; such as helping people with glucose testing, emergency room support, doing wellness checks and even immunizations and IV antibiotics.

The services are already used now in care homes and seniors living complexes and 39 ground ambulance services in the province are providing the service, according to the SHA’s website.

“Community paramedics work closely with other health care professionals in home care primary health and really bring the same thing that home care does, but in a paramedic sense,” said Skoworodko.

Some money will also go to the community first responder program.

“There is more work to be done but we’re pleased at the starting point and that they’ve recognized that there needs to be that funding,” he said.

Skoworodko said there was an EMS staffing shortage before, and filling positions was a challenge.

It takes about a year of training through Sask. Polytech to become a primary care paramedic with graduates also required to pass a national licensing exam.

The COVID-19 pandemic has played a role and there was a drop in the number of students registered during that period.

“We’ve been working with Sask Polytech as well as the college to try and get paramedics that are in the process of getting ready to ride, that they’re as successful as they can so they can start working as soon as possible,” said Skoworodko.

The 105 ambulance services in Saskatchewan respond to about 150,000 calls annually which equals about 400 events per day.

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susan.mcneil@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @princealbertnow