Calls have gone down, but ambulance response times have risen dramatically in Burnaby

Over the last several years, ambulance calls in Burnaby have dropped by nearly 4.5%, but response times have risen in every category.

And the president of BC’s paramedics’ union blames the slower response times not only on a provincewide shortage of paramedics but the effective closure of several ambulance stations in Burnaby.

In 2018, there were 18,561 calls for paramedics, a figure that increased slightly to 18,734 in 2019, before dropping to 17,728 in 2020, and to 17,279 in 2021, according to data obtained by Fraser Valley Current.

But response times to codes purple, red, orange, and yellow calls have all increased.

Code yellows saw the most drastic increase in response times, despite also seeing the bulk of the decrease in the number of calls. Between 2018 and 2020, the number of code yellow calls steadily dropped from 8,487 calls to 7,666.

But in that same period, response times increased steadily from 23 minutes to just over 27 minutes.

Responding to the heat dome

And 2021 saw that disparity turn into a canyon—among 6,213 code yellows that year, the median response time was 38 minutes and 25 seconds.

Last year’s median ambulance response times saw major increases nearly everywhere in BC, with the devastating heat dome exposing the severity of a provincewide paramedics shortage.

Code orange calls were less consistent over those four years, bouncing between a low of 5,639 in 2018 and a high of 6,153 in 2019. In 2020, there were 5,766 code orange calls, followed by 6,011 in 2021.

But regardless of that fluctuating call volume, response times to code oranges also steadily increased from close to 13 minutes in 2018 to just over 14 minutes in 2020. And in 2021, the median response time was nearly 19 minutes.

Codes purple and red saw the most stability both in response times and in the number of calls. Between 2018 and 2020, the number of calls hovered between about 4,300 and just over 4,600, while response times slowly increased from 10 minutes to 10:34.

Last year, Burnaby saw 5,055 code purple/red calls with a median response time of 12:15.

Burnaby lags behind other cities

According to an Ambulance Paramedics of BC campaign launched in 2017, the goal in Canada is for paramedics to arrive on scene in eight minutes and 59 seconds for the most serious calls.

But response times in Burnaby don’t just lag behind the national goal—they lag behind many other major cities.

In Surrey, code purple/red calls saw median response times consistently below 10 minutes from 2018 to 2020. Code orange calls ranged from just under 12 minutes to just under 13 minutes in that time, and code yellows were between just under 19 minutes and about 20:30.

Vancouver’s code purple/red calls saw median response times of 7:39 to 8:15 in 2018 to 2020, and Victoria’s median response times for the most serious calls capped out at 7:10 in that time.

And those cities were similarly well below Burnaby’s response times last year as well.

BCEHS admitted to Fraser Valley Current that response times in Burnaby—along with other centres like Langley, Abbotsford, and Chilliwack—are trending even higher this year than last year.

Ambulance stations not being used

Ambulance Paramedics of BC president Troy Clifford said the entire province suffers from a shortage of paramedics, but in Burnaby, a lack of staffed ambulance stations only amplifies the issue.

“We have a large gap of areas in Burnaby where we don’t have any ambulance stations,” Clifford told the Beacon.

“We have one ambulance station that services Burnaby. They’ve shut down, over the last five to 10 years, all four of the additional other ones that amalgamated into that new station.”

In 2020, Clifford raised concerns about the closure of the only North Burnaby ambulance station on Douglas Road near Boundary Road.

The ambulance hub

BC Emergency Health Services, which operates ambulance services, told the Burnaby Now at the time that the Douglas Road station wasn’t closing, but rather that its staff were moving to a hub station in South Burnaby.

At 5901 Delesalle St., BCEHS built a 46,700-square-foot facility modelled on the ambulance station hub in Victoria, the Now reported.

BCEHS told the Now that the Delesalle facility would improve ambulance response times in Burnaby.

“For a long time, we’ve really lobbied that they should have more ambulance stations and more ambulances,” Clifford told the Beacon, adding that the station closures have affected the Lower Mainland in general, but especially Burnaby and Vancouver.

Clifford acknowledged that the Douglas Road facility is still there, but said it isn’t being utilized.

He added that the same thing has happened with an ambulance station near the border with New West, another one near Boundary Road, and one near North Road and Lougheed Highway.

“That’s definitely a significant challenge for coverage for timely responses for ambulances. And that’s assuming we have them in our station,” he said.

“We just don’t have enough ambulances staffed.”

Over 1,000 paramedic vacancies

And that goes back to the issue around hiring and retaining paramedics in the province. BCEHS told Fraser Valley Current that ambulances are in service only around 79% of the time.

Clifford said there are currently over 1,000 vacancies for paramedics in BC, an issue that’s affected both in recruitment and retention.

He said a major part of the issue is wages.

“We’re about 30% behind all other public safety disciplines and a lot of our health partners, like nursing and health disciplines,” Clifford said.

“People just aren’t making the choice to come into this profession. They’re choosing other careers in health or public safety, and they’re also choosing to go into private industry, where you can make incredibly better money as a medic in private industry, or they’re just choosing alternative careers.”

Last year, after the heat dome, the province promised to add hundreds more positions, though CTV News pointed out that most of those were upgrading part-time positions to full-time ones, rather than actual new positions.

Clifford said the province made good on adding those positions, but he said there haven’t been the paramedics to actually fill those positions.

“There are just physically not people coming in to fill the positions,” he said.

On top of pay issues, paramedics face some of the highest rates of post-traumatic stress disorder in the country—higher than police, firefighters, and other healthcare workers, Clifford said.

“Over 30% of our members are either off on WorkSafe for psychological injuries, PTSD, that type of stuff, or in treatment for it while at work,” he said.

“And that’s also hurting our ability to staff.”