How Brant’s outgoing paramedic chief helped flip the service round

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The outgoing chief of the Brant-Brantford Paramedic Service is leaving on a excessive word.

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In his eight years on the helm of the service, Russell King has weathered the COVID-19 pandemic and rising pains.

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However when he retires on the finish of November, after 25 years serving the Metropolis of Brantford and County of Brant, he might be abandoning one thing he’s pleased with.

“I feel I’ve left the service and the neighborhood in a greater spot in order that the subsequent particular person, shifting ahead, can construct on our success,” he informed The Spectator.

When King stepped into the function, sources had been “considerably restricted,” he mentioned.

That was compounded by the area’s fast progress and its growing older inhabitants, with name volumes growing by 60 per cent between 2016 and 2025.

By 2024, the service was one of many worst in off-load delays within the province — time spent transferring sufferers to the hospital’s care — with a mean delay of 80 minutes, King beforehand informed the paramedic committee.

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The identical 12 months, it had 1,740 code zeroes, which means there have been, on common, 145 instances every month when not one of the service’s ambulances had been accessible to answer a name.

This 12 months, off-load delays are all the way down to a mean of slightly below 40 minutes — 20 minutes under the provincial P4R (pay for outcomes) goal.

To this point for 2025, the code zero common is all the way down to 96 a month, based on July statistics.

Past the constructive influence for sufferers, it means paramedics aren’t working as a lot extra time and have time between difficult calls to decompress or eat lunch, King mentioned.

So what modified?

“We had been all doing the identical factor again and again, hoping for higher outcomes,” King informed The Spectator.

However in February 2023, provincial funding allowed for a nurse devoted to off-loading sufferers introduced by the paramedics.

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The service expanded neighborhood paramedic applications, which helps to handle over 5,000 calls a 12 months, and diverts “a major variety of sufferers” from the emergency division, based on a report the paramedic committee noticed final month.

And, the Ministry of Well being introduced the Brant Group Healthcare System (BCHS) — which oversees the hospital — and paramedic senior workers collectively to often go over mitigation methods for the off-load delays, King mentioned.

This included working with Andrea Ennis, the director of emergency companies program at North York Basic Hospital, who helped to alter the best way the hospital and paramedics labored collectively.

“Every little thing that we put into place has truly labored,” King mentioned.

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He credit BCHS’s new management for serving to to alter the tradition on the hospital, town and county councils for his or her help, and the paramedics for “believing that we are able to make that change … They had been a part of the answer.”

The improved communication and collaboration, significantly between EMS supervisors and the BCHS charge-nurse crew, has constructed “a extra practical and efficient working relationship,” Michael Marini, communications supervisor for BCHS, mentioned in a press release.

“Chief Russell King was central to those efforts and BCHS sincerely appreciates his help and management in addition to the BBPS crew behind him. We sit up for persevering with this nice working relationship and know that Russell has helped lay the inspiration for higher look after the neighborhood of Brantford-Brant,” the assertion mentioned.

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King has continued pushing for extra sources which “might help us get higher” and go away a small buffer for capability to cope with unexpected occasions like a six-car pileup or twister, he mentioned.

On the finish of September, town and county had been at odds over whether or not to fund extra capability within the 2026 funds.

However of the adjustments the service has undergone in the previous couple of years, individuals have informed King his “legacy” would be the new headquarters, and he likes to suppose so too.

A brand new paramedic headquarters

Till now, the service has been based mostly out of 303 Henry St. in Brantford, with two satellite tv for pc bases in Brantford (Colborne and Tranquility) and two within the county (Paris and Cainsville).

Area was restricted. For coaching, they typically needed to e book one of many hearth halls. If paramedics wanted area to course of a troublesome name, they had been restricted to exterior or sitting of their vehicles, King mentioned.

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They’ve by no means had “one thing so fantastic” because the almost 30,000-square-foot area off Freeway 403 on Savannah Oaks Drive in Brantford, he mentioned.

The county entered into long-term lease agreements with GrandBridge Vitality and GrandBridge Options, and there’s area for the service to develop. An adjoining storage is being constructed to retailer their fleet of autos.

Paramedics who must course of a troublesome name will be capable to retreat to a “quiet room” within the new headquarters.

Highlights of the brand new area embrace:

• A supervisor’s workplace with clear views of the vehicles coming in, and large-screen TVs that may enable them to see at a look the place all of the service’s autos are all through the municipalities.
• A big warehouse for storing six months price of provides.
• A crew lounge and charting space.
• A devoted neighborhood paramedicine room.
• Spacious locker rooms.
• A fitness center space.
• A 60-person boardroom that might perform as an emergency operations centre if wanted.
• Coaching rooms.
• A quiet room the place workers can retreat after a nasty name.

Till the storage they’re constructing to carry the fleet is full, supervisors can use the area as a satellite tv for pc station, however all operations are anticipated to switch over by September 2026.

However King isn’t unhappy he received’t be capable to get pleasure from it. He feels glad to be leaving the service “with one thing like this.”

Celeste Percy-Beauregard is a Native Journalism Initiative Reporter based mostly on the Hamilton Spectator. The initiative is funded by the Authorities of Canada.

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