Ambulance

Serving about 130,000 citizens, County of Brant Ambulance Services has a team of 115 primary and advanced care paramedics and support staff. We operate three stations in Brantford and one in Paris.

Covering an area of 924 square kilometres of response, we responded to over 20,935 calls for assistance in 2016.

Growing with the county, our call volume has increased by 55% over the past two decades.

Responding to Emergencies

We follow a tiered response model with the local fire department to make sure we respond rapidly to life threatening emergencies.

Our resources are dispatched through the Hamilton Central Ambulance Communication Centre. The Ontario Ministry of Health and Long Term Care oversees operations.

Brant's team has 35 individuals with advance paramedical skills who can provide cardiac monitoring, pacing and defibrillation, intravenous fluid delivery and administration of medications.

Our Duties and Policy

It is the duty of each employee of the County of Brant Ambulance Service to:

1. Serve the ill, injured, general public and fellow employees in a responsible and conscientious manner.
2. Ensure the safety of patients and provide the most appropriate care, as per B.L.S. Patient Care Standards.
3. Respect the rights of patients and ensure patient confidentiality is maintained.
4. Maintain a constant state of readiness to respond to medical emergencies.
5. Conduct business operations in a professional manner avoiding any practice likely to be detrimental or disgraceful to the service or fellow employees.
6. Uphold standards set down by the service and the regulations pertaining to the Ambulance Act.

Read our full Service Commitment Statement.

Ambulance Services Review & Action Plan

In July of 2016, Performance Concepts Consulting Inc., in association with InterDev Technologies prepared a Land Ambulance Action Plan. The Brant ambulance service faces significant system demand challenges driven by population growth and the impending "Aging Tsunami" of baby boomers. Population growth and the "Aging Tsunami" are going to generate 6% annual call volume growth in Brant across the next decade and beyond.

Current Brant ambulance system performance (2012-2015) is characterized by high levels of system busyness; with problematic mid-day busyness peak levels exceeding 40%. High levels of mid-day peak system busyness erode the availability of deployed ambulances units to meet patient demand. In 2015 Brant experienced "zero available units" occurrences 1,192 times - lasting the equivalent of nine calendar days of the year. Average response times for urgent/emergency calls following the onset of "zero available units" status were twice as long (17 minutes) as Brant's normal response times. Brant's "zero available units" problem is significantly more serious than that experienced by peer Ontario ambulance systems. The patient risk associated with "zero unit" frequency, duration and slow response times is significant, and should be reduced as soon as possible.

In order to mitigate "zero units available" patient risk this report makes the following recommendations:

• In fall 2016, redeploy a 12-hour ambulance shift from the relatively low system busyness overnight period to the high system busyness mid-day period (12:00 pm - 12:00 am). This will reduce mid-day system busyness levels, and cut down on occurrences of "zero unit availability".
• In 2017, fund and then deploy a new 12-hour ambulance to the high system busyness mid-day period (10:00 am - 10:00 pm). In combination with the 2016 redeployment, the combined impact should be a significant reduction in mid-day peak system busyness and an estimated 40% reduction in "zero unit" occurrences.

Additional report recommendations deal with a restructured supervisory model, and a new analytics driven ambulance system planning model. Figure 31 from the report sets out the longer term ambulance "investment schedule" of $.5M paramedic staffing additions (i.e. 12-hour shifts) necessary to preserve system performance improvements beyond 2017 (given the realities of 6% forecast call volume growth).