Whitehorse ambulance service eyes new home for dispatch

Yukon's Emergency Medical Services is considering a new dispatch centre in Whitehorse as a solution to a lagging problem: ambulance response timesthat arenot meeting national standards.

Ambulances responded to more than 3,600 calls last year in Whitehorse, but not all of them arrived at the scene within nine minutes, which is considered to be the national standard.

"We can respond to 28 per cent of the population in Whitehorse in that time frame because of the growth of the city and how we're spread out in all the little subdivisions," said Bea Felker, director of Emergency Medical Services. "So we're not meeting the national standard."

On average, ambulances can reach downtown calls in about seven minutes, but it takes 12 minutes to reach outlying areas like Copper Ridge and Porter Creek, and up to 19 minutes to reach further areas like McPherson.

As a result, EMS is exploring some options to improve those times, including moving its ambulance dispatch centre from the current location by the hospital to the centrally located Two Mile Hill area, where the city's new fire hall will be built.

"Is there a better place to be located to give better response time to the entire city of Whitehorse?" Felker said Thursday. "We're exploring the options.

"You don't have to go through the congestion of downtown, and then so you can go to Porter Creek, Crestview, Valleyview," Felker said.

While moving the city's dispatch centre is just an idea right now, Whitehorse Coun. Dave Stockdale said the Yukon government and the city have been talking about it.

But Mayor Bev Buckway said it is too late to combine the fire hall and dispatch centrein the new fire hall building, since those plans have already been drafted.

"We decided that if we wanted to get the fire hall built, then we needed to move forward with our plans. And that we have done," she said.

"Now, there are still talks ongoing and with the size of the property, there might be some room to renovate this building and put the ambulance service in there."

In the meantime, Felker said EMS is looking at other ways to improve its response times, from upgrading its equipment to providing more training to paramedics.

"There's still the care that's needed from the time they get there until they get them back down to the hospital. So what we're doing is providing care, providing training to the paramedics here, so that we ensure that the population gets really good care from that point until they get to the hospital," she said. "That's one way of dealing with the response time."

Felker said EMS hopes to have a final decision on its plans within a few months.