A third-party review of Huron County's paramedic services still recommends relocating some stations in order to optimize services over the next decade.
County council received a presentation from Operational Research in Health (ORH) Consultant Andrew Greggan on Wednesday, who said in the short-term, members should look at moving the Tuckersmith station on Kinburn Line, down the road to Seaforth.
ORH's modeling showed that relocation would create the largest performance improvement, with 8-minute response performance increasing nearly 10 per cent in Huron East and by one per cent across the County.
Huron County's Director of Emergency Services Jeff Horseman said this review was first done in 2019, before implementation was thrown for a loop by the pandemic.
"Some of the recommendations at the time were implemented, others were brought forward as a greater priority, some were pushed off," he said. "Now that we're freshly out of COVID and moving forward, we felt that it would be in our best interest to bring ORH back into the mix, refresh the plan and make sure we were still on the same track as we should be."
The report also recommended some scheduling changes to optimize efficiency, including adding a night shift in Bayfield in the next few years, and considering adding more days shifts in Wingham and Clinton down the line.
ORH's review also found that the average time per incident has gone up from 55 minutes in 2019 to over an hour the last few years. Greggan said that's mostly due to time offloading at hospitals going up an average of 7 minutes.
Surprisingly, Greggan said his model didn't show a major impact from temporary ER closures like the ongoing one in Clinton.
"In our model we tested reopening Clinton Hospital overnight to assess the impact," he said. "There is a small impact... definitely something to monitor and it might depend on the scale and future of some of those closures, whether they're the larger hospitals in particular.
Through the first half of 2024, average response time for Huron County Paramedics was nine minutes and two seconds, a 32 second improvement from two years prior.
You can find ORH's full review here.