Emerson, Manitoba and the need to improve emergency response times

This morning, I was in Emerson and visiting with Mayor Wayne Arseny, Deputy Mayor Art Klan and Fire Chief Jason Propp.  Our discussion focused on the issues surrounding slow emergency response times for health issues in Emerson, and the recent death of a women where there was too slow a response.

First, though let me say that I was impressed with the Fire Fighting team in Emerson.  Fire Chief Jason Propp showed me around the Fire Station and the excellent set up and equipment that Emerson has.  Congratulations to all in Emerson who have contributed to this high quality fire fighting and rescue capacity in Emerson.  By the way, the Emerson Fire Department began in 1880 - and was the third Fire Fighting Unit in Manitoba!

But when it comes to emergency responses for health reasons it is another situation altogether.  Emerson had an excellent emergency response capacity before the Central Regional Health Authority became involved and messed things up.   The response times were normally under 8 minutes before the Central RHA took over.  Central RHA promised they would have responses in less then half an hour, but it soon became apparent they were not going to achieve that.  The reason, there is now no emergency response capacity based in Emerson.  Emergency Responders must come from Altona, Morris, Vita or St. Pierre.  Two recent examples were given to me.  In one there was a response time of about an hour when a man fell off a roof.   In the second, the response time for a woman who had a fall was about 90 minutes from when the emergency call was put in.  This woman was taken to Morris and there was found to have serious injuries and sent to the Boundary Trails Hospital between Morden and Winkler.  I was told the trip to Emerson from St. Pierre, which is where the ambulance came from, and the trip to Morris and then the trip to Boundary Trails took about 3 hours until she was where she needed to be to get help.  Sadly, it was too late and she died.

After talking about the situation, and the problem of slow emergency responses for people in  Emerson, we had a discussion about the solutions.  One difficulty is that Emerson is at the very edge of the Central RHA, and also at the edge of the South Eastman RHA.  Emerson is ideally suited to provide service to people in Emerson and the surrounding area.  However, because Emerson is located at the edge of the two RHAs, it appears that neither one wants to establish an Ambulance service based in Emerson even though it is situated on Highway 75, and is the fifth busiest border crossing in Canada processing  about $14 billion in trade traffic annually, and having more trade that any other border crossing in Western Canada.

Yet, the present Health Minister in Manitoba has neglected Emerson.   The Mayor in Emerson has been asking for a meeting with the Minister of Health to deal with this situation for some time, but has been unable to get such a meeting.   Because Emerson sits at the border of two RHAs, there is an urgent need to find a way for the two RHAs to cooperate.  Given that each of the two RHAs view Emerson as the far distant periphery of their empires, the only way to achieve this cooperation is the direct intervention of the Minister of Health.   There is, of course, a larger issue here - that the Minister needs to provide a framework for the RHAs that encourages cooperation on issues like this instead of one that encourages separation!

The answer for Emerson may not be all that difficult.  Indeed, I was informed that members of the Fire Department (the Emerson Volunteer Fire and Rescue), would very much like to have training as emergency responders so they could respond to health emergencies, just as in many other communities, members of fire and paramedic services often have cross training and work closely together.  The problem is that achieving such training today is too expensive.  There are two options.  The first option is to send the Emerson fire fighters to Brandon to get the training.  This is far too costly and too inconvenient.  The second, and better, option is to have the Emerson fire fighters get their training in Emerson.  While this is a good option, it is also expensive, costing $27,000 to provide the course in Emerson.  The Minster of Health could intervene to facilitate the Central RHA, the South Eastman RHA and Emerson working together in providing this course.  Alternatively, the Minister of Health could undertake talks with the Central RHA and the South Eastman RHA about working together to have a formal ambulance service in Emerson.  The big question is: Will the Minister of Health get involved or will she let the unacceptably long emergency response times for Emerson residents continue?

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