Whereas BC Emergency Health Services BCEHS ambulance service is a vital component of life safety and access to healthcare for those who live and work in small rural communities, which are often a significant distance from fully-equipped hospitals; And whereas, in addition to there often not being an adequate availability of paramedics in the province, the BC Ambulance Service within rural BC is experiencing a critical pandemic shortage, leading to significant shift vacancies and underserviced ambulances for prolonged periods of timesa long standing issue which demonstrates that the current model is unsustainable due to the high degree of training and certification required and lack of meaningful and adequate compensation provided: Therefore be it resolved that UBCM ask the Province of British Columbia to undertake a review of the BC Ambulance Service, specifically in the rural areas, to find a solution and systematic way of managing recruitment and retention of paramedics and delivery of service in rural communities.
Ministry of Health Since 2021, BC Emergency Health Services BCEHS, in partnership with the government of BC, has made significant changes and investments to improve and stabilize staffing throughout the province, including in rural and remote communities. These actions resulted in hundreds of paramedics in rural and remote areas throughout the province being moved from on-call paramedic positions to permanent paramedic positions. The Rural, Remote, First Nations and Indigenous COVID-19 Response Framework was announced by Premier Horgan in April 2020, to ensure people in rural and remote areas could access critical health care services. As part of this work, BCEHS added 55 new ground ambulances, with temporary paramedic resources, and 5 new air resources to enhance access to prehospital care for people in rural and remote communities in BC. With the addition of these 5 air ambulances, BCEHS currently has 18 air ambulance to serve people throughout BC. On September 2022, BCEHS posted 254 new permanent positions around the province to transition the additional temporary positions introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic to permanent positions. In June 2022, a temporary incentive to help bridge staffing challenges in smaller rural and remote communities was put in place to help bolster paramedic coverage and improve service levels. These temporary positions concluded on October 21, 2022, with a positive impact in some of the hardest-to-staff areas of the province. Before the original incentive program was set to expire, BCEHS and Ambulance Paramedics and Dispatchers Association of BC CUPE 873 CUPE 873, with assistance from government, collaborated on a more robust temporary incentive program to help ensure people in rural and remote communities provincewide, have access to the emergency pre-hospital care they need. This incentive was put in place on October 22, 2022, and will remain in place until BCEHS and CUPE 873 have a new collective agreement in place. Negotiations for a new collective agreement began on October 3, 2022. BCEHS continues to monitor staffing models closely and are considering other options to help meet the service needs of the diverse rural and remote communities. This includes a continued focused on building paramedic capacity through a national recruitment campaign and local engagement in communities across the province. To help support retention of BCEHS employees, BCEHS and CUPE 873 are working closely together, following guidance from the Ministry of Health, to build a collaborative mental health and wellness strategy for BCEHS. BCEHS is adding resources to the network of trauma-informed and occupationally competent counsellors who provide psychological care to paramedics, dispatchers, and other employees. They are also working with CUPE 873, to strengthen BCEHS Critical Incident Stress CIS Program, by adding more full time CIS coordinators and peers. This work will also include the development of educational resources in psychological safety, workplace mental health, and resilience. In addition, a joint committee with BCEHS and the union has been formed to develop and implement a psychological health and safety strategy. The joint committee will focus future efforts on developing a long-term implementation strategy and oversight, that ensures the mental health and wellness supports are effective, evidence-based and relevant to the challenging work faced by paramedics, dispatchers and other employees.