Huron County council has tentatively approved a recommendation from senior administration and by a consultant's report on the issue to add four new paramedics and a new vehicle to the base that's already in Goderich.
Chief of Emergency Services, Jeff Horseman, says the increase in manpower would increase the staffing hours at the Goderich Paramedic Base by 84 operational hours a week and is a response to the ever-increasing call volume in the Goderich, Ashfield-Colborne-Wawanosh, Bayfield, and to a smaller degree, Clinton areas.
Horseman says a number of factors have contributed to that increase.
"An aging population, increased complexity of cases and in order to keep our response times and our patient care standards at the level that they're at currently, we're going to require more staffing on the road in the very near future."
Horseman says part of the increasing complexity of the cases they deal with are a result of the number of people that are now homeless and many of them are dealing with mental health issues.
"In some areas of the province, thirty per cent of their call volume right now is dealing with mental health issues in the community. So it is significant, it's growing in rural Ontario, it's growing in Huron County. I'm not sure it's quite up to thirty per cent yet, but it is definitely a growing part of our call volume."
Horseman says at this time, county council has approved the report to put the proposal into the budget for 2022 and it will have to go through that budget process. He says if it does, the plan would be to implement it in July of 2022.
