Ambulance Service Proposal At Frontenac County At Chief Chevalier’s Last Meeting

Jeff Green | Sep 25, 2024

At a meeting of Frontenac County Council last week, members of council spent the bulk of the meeting considering a plan to increase the capacity of Frontenac Paramedic Services to meet the needs of the population in Kingston, and Frontenac County, over the next ten years.

The proposed changes, which were presented by Hannah Mayes-Frenett of the consulting company Operational Research in Health, will take place mostly in Kingston. The layout and locations of Paramedic stations in Kingston is influx, while the county has invested in improvements in Frontenac County over the last ten years, as part of an earlier process. And because the municipal portion of the Frontenac Paramedic Services budget is covered by residents of the City of Kingston and residents of Frontenac County, costs associated with the proposals will be shared.

The proposal is ambitious. Aside from the capital costs for new stations, it calls for an increase of four 24-hour ambulances to serve the City of Kingston, as well as an additional 12-hour service at both the Parham and Robertsville bases in Central and North Frontenac. The proposal did not go into costs, but the increase in vehicle costs and numbers of Paramedics working for the service, in order to complete the upgrade, will need to be considered. This could spark a new round of heated conversations between Frontenac County and the City of Kingston.

Fred Fowler, councillor from North Frontenac, said that the “elephant in the room” as far as response times go, is the offload issue at Kingston General Hospital. This is because paramedics can not leave a patient until they are admitted, and an overloaded emergency room can take a long time to take over the care of patients arriving by ambulance.

Frontenac County Chief of Paramedic Services, Gale Chevalier, who was attending her last meeting before retiring after 33 years with the service, said that the offload problem is a province-wide issue and ongoing efforts to address it are continuing, but the proposals coming forward are more about dealing with increases in service demand.

“The Elephant in the room” said Frontenac Islands Mayor Judith Greenwood-Speers, “is really the return of the Wolfe Island service, which is not included in this proposal.

The 12 hour per day ambulance service in Wolfe Island was formally canceled in 2022, after not being offered for over 2 years because of staffing shortages.

The main factor is Unit Hour Utilisation (UHU), according to Mayes-Frenett. UHU is an analytical tool that measures how active paramedics are throughout their shifts. The optimum, according to the consultant, is 35%. In Kingston, currently, the rate is well over 50%, leading to slower response times and paramedic burnout. The rate in rural Frontenac bases is in the 15%-25% range, lower than optimal but within an acceptable range given the lower population levels. The project UHU in Wolfe Island for a day shift would be 5%, said Mayes-Frenett.

Mayor Greenwood-Speers said that by the time an ambulance gets on the Wolfe Island Ferry to answer an emergency call, the wait time is an hour and a half, “and that is a factor in the slower response times in Kingston. It is also a threat to the lives of the population on Wolfe Island,” she said. She added that half of the resident population on Wolfe Island is made up of seniors, and their basic right to health services includes ambulance service.

The consultant report was received for information, and will be incorporated into planning for the future of Frontenac Paramedic Services.

In his monthly report, which took place before the presentation, Chief Administrative Officer Kevin Farrell, talked about the impactful career of Gale Chevalier at Frontenac County. He became emotional when talking about working with her over the years.

Warden Frances Smith, who also had to hold back tears, talked about Gale Chevalier’s calm demeanor as she helped Council navigate through difficult conversations about the service. There are other changes in leadership at Frontenac Paramedic Services. When Marc Goudie was named as the new chief, starting at the end of the month, it created an opening for his old job as deputy chief of performance standards, a role that will be filled by Jeremie Hurtubise. The new superintendent of performance standards is Shauna Dunn, a name that may be familiar as she had previously been the long time president of the OPSEU local.

Asset Management to impact 2025 budget deliberations

One item on the agenda that did not spark much conversation this month, will likely take up more time when the council discusses the 2025 budget in late October. It was the updated asset management report. The core concept of asset management is to look at fixed infrastructure within a municipality from the point of view of capital maintenance and replacement costs, and put money aside to buffer the impact on taxpayers when the assets need replacing. In 2014, the council of the day opted to institute a 0.65% tax increase each year for three years, to be put towards reserves for capital maintenance and replacement costs. That commitment was later upped to 10 years, running out in 2024.

But, as a new report to council indicated, that 2014 commitment was the cheapest of three options that was presented, and even at the time, it was not expected to put the county into a strong position when buildings needed replacing. As well, the 2014 projections of a 2% average inflation rate has proven to be very low, particularly in regard to post pandemic construction costs.

As a result, the new report calls for a 1.6% budget increase per year for 15 years, starting in 2025. If this plan is adopted, along with provisions for inflation (2% on average) Council will be starting their budget deliberations each year with a 3.6% increase and looking at project proposals on top of that.

Frontenac County budget deliberations are scheduled for October 29 and 30.