Huron County's Chief of Emergency Services presented the 2024 Land Ambulance Response Time Performance Plan to council at last week's meeting.
Jeff Horseman says that plan is traditionally based on the previous year's actual response time.
“So what we have done is we've taken the 2022 actual response times that we achieved for the different categories and the 2023 response times up until the end of June and then we recommend to council what we would put in for our 2024 target," said Horseman.
Horseman says they made the same recommendation this year as they did last year and that is that they stay with the previous year's response time.
But Horseman says it's important to note that in 2022 they had roughly a four and a half per cent increase in their call volume and if that trend continues without adding more resources it will be very difficult for them to meet the same response time targets.
“We were seeing anywhere between a three and a five per cent year over year call volume increase for the last several years and that's expected with the aging demographics and growth in Huron. That's expected to increase for the foreseeable future, we're likely to see somewhere between three and five per cent," Horseman explained,
So, Horseman says in the very near future there will have to be more resources, or the county will have to accept longer response times.
Horseman adds the ten year plan that was presented to council in 2020 did include additions in resources to address the increasing call volumes that were expected, and they are closely monitoring response times and the increase in call volume.
