Ambulance Service Cut In Kingston

Jeff Green | Mar 28, 2013

n an effort to stem a continual increase in the cost of running the ambulance service, Frontenac County will be cutting a 12-hour ambulance in the City of Kingston. The cut will relegate four full-time paramedics to part-time status.

The cost of running the service went up by over 15% between 2009 and 2012.

Cutting a busy shift was not the county’s first choice as a method of stemming the increases in costs. On January 16, the County announced a new sick time strategy. Noting that replacing sick and injured workers was costing the service more and more each year, the decision was made to pull cars off the road during selected shifts when paramedics called in sick. The goal of that strategy was to save the cost of 5,000 hours in 2013.

However, early in March, OPSEU Local 462, which represents Frontenac County Paramedics, announced that it was going to launch a grievance against the County’s sick time strategy to the Ontario Labour Relations Board.

Instead of entering into a grievance process, County Council abandoned the sick time strategy and opted instead for a decisive course of action.

“Rather than engage in potentially protracted and expensive litigation regarding an initiative designed to reduce costs, County Council determined that cost reductions had to be found elsewhere. Council determined the savings would be achieved through the transition of four full-time paramedics to part-time positions and the reduction of service by one 12-hour per day vehicle located at Palace Road in Kingston. The strategy will come into effect on May 6, 2013,” said a County press release last week.

By cutting a 12-hour day shift from the busiest ambulance base in the City of Kingston, on Palace Road, the county will realise savings in equipment replacement costs, as well as over 6,800 hours of labour costs in 2013. Four full time paramedics will be relegated to part-time status and according to Dave Parkhill, Vice President of Local 462, “Those paramedics will, in reality, be laid off. There have been very few shifts for part-timers as it is, and adding four more to the list will only make times even leaner for all of them.”

The County expressed regret at taking the action.

“This was a very difficult decision. However, action was required to stem the escalating costs while at the same time maintaining effective service and this was the best option available to the County as permissible in accordance with the restrictions of the collective agreement,” said the county release.

In a telephone interview, Paul Charbonneau, the Chief of Paramedic Services for Frontenac County, said that cutting the shift will have an “impact on response times in the city during daytime hours, but we are confident that we can maintain the response time targets that were set by the County.”

Charbonneau also said that the cost increases faced by the ambulance service are not solely the result of increased sick time. “Sick time was only a contributing factor,” he said, “along with wage and benefit increases, and other costs.”

One of the anomalies of municipal governance is the fact that the ambulance service, which handles approximately 18,000 calls per year in Kingston, answers to Frontenac County Council, where about 3,000 calls per year are located.

Provincial funding covers 50% of ambulance costs; Kingston residents also pay about 40% of the cost of the ambulance service through their property taxes; while Frontenac County residents pay about 10%. But through a quirk of municipal jurisdiction, Frontenac land ambulance is managed entirely by Frontenac County.

“Yet, the impact of these new measures will be felt entirely by the residents of Kingston,” said Dave Parkhill.

Paul Charbonneau said that “The City has been informed of the measures that we are taking.” He also said that his office has had little direct contact with OPSEU Local 462 since October, when the Frontenac County Land Ambulance Service reported itself to the Ontario Labour Board amid concerns over the safety of some ambulance calls.

Parkhill said, “We had been talking with the County about the safety issue for months, and we thought we had developed a pretty strong relationship in working towards a solution. But then they self-reported to the Labour Board without our knowledge, and that strained our relations.”

This latest measure is sure to strain those relations further, and indicates that the county is likely to take a hard line in upcoming contract negotiations with the union. The collective agreement between Local 462 and the County expires at the end of 2013.

“I will not speculate about how this may or may not affect contract negotiations,” said Charbonneau. “They are still nine months away.”