Ambulances are spending a little less of their time offloading patients according to t he 2012 Ontario Municipal Benchmark Initiative (OMBI) report . That is positive: time spent offloading patients to overcrowded hospitals could otherwise be spent responding more quickly to 911 emergency calls. Nevertheless, we remain far behind where we were a few years ago. The OMBI study reports EMS data for 12 large Ontario urban municipalities --and also Muskoka. It indicates: The percentage of time spent in hospital Emergency Rooms (“offload delay”) has declined from 18.7% of total EMS time in 2011to 17.8% in 2012. However, this is the same percentage as in 2010 and is up significantly from 2009 when paramedics spent 16.7% of their time waiting in ERs. Indeed, in 2007 paramedics spent 15.4% of their time in hospital ERs, and in 2006 they spent 13.3% of their time in hospital ERs. In other words, since 2006, paramedics are spending 1/3 more of their tim
Notes from Leftwords -- Doug Allan