BARRHEAD - After several years of lobbying, the Barrhead Regional Fire Services (BRFS) will receive a stipend from the province for going on medical assistance calls.
County manager Debbie Oyarzun told councillors during their Feb. 10 meeting that the fire department will receive more than $10,600 from Alberta Health Services (AHS).
"This is the first time to my knowledge that [fire departments that are part of the medical first response program] have ever been recognized by AHS," she said, adding for several years, municipalities and their provincial organizations have been lobbying the province for compensation when their firefighters respond to medical assistance calls.
She said years ago, the municipalities opted to give their residents the extra level of service, with the BRFS providing medical assistance above basic first aid, enrolling in the province's medical first response (MFR) program.
However, in recent years, municipalities enrolled in the province's MFR program, including Barrhead municipal councils, have stated they believed AHS has been taking advantage of local governments which provide the service as a way to make up for shortcomings in the provincial ambulance service and haven't provided adequate funding local governments that provide the service. Town of Barrhead councillors have been especially vocal lobbying the AHS, the Minister of Health and the premier’s office.
Oyarzun also noted that the organizations representing both urban and rural municipalities, Rural Municipalities of Alberta (RMA) and Alberta Municipalities (ABMunis), have both put forth resolutions to have the province compensate municipalities.
BRFS fire chief Gary Hove, in 2018, re-drafted the department's medical first response protocols so firefighters would only respond to the most urgent medical categories or if they were specifically requested by AHS and the local ambulance crew.
Coun. Ron Klienfeldt asked if AHS determined how much they would provide fire departments participating in the medical first response program, saying the amount seemed relatively low considering the number of medical assistance calls the fire department responds to.
Oyarzun said information from AHS states that the $2.5 million provincial funding pool is divvied out to fire departments and other volunteer MFR organizations through a formula that considers the overall participation, number of responses to life-threatening medical events and the size of the community.
"They don't go into much more detail than that," she said.
During his latest BRFS quarterly report to County of Barrhead council in early December, accounting for the third quarter of 2023 for July, August and September, medical assistance calls accounted for roughly 48 per cent of the 120 BRFS responses for the quarter, accounting for over 105 hours of firefighter time.
Most responses were within the Town of Barrhead's borders at 41, while 16 were in the county. Combined, they accounted for over 41 hours of firefighter time.
In his Jan. 9 Town of Barrhead CAO report, Ed LeBlanc stated that the BRFS responded to 52 calls. Of those, 25 were medical assist calls, accounting for 74.5 firefighter hours or about 28 per cent of total firefighter time.
