2025 Response Time Standards - Issue Report

Report To: Manitoulin-Sudbury District Services Board

From: Paul Myre, Chief of Paramedic Services

Date: October 16, 2024

Re: 2025 Response Time Standards - Issue Report

Overview

Paramedic Services across Ontario are legislatively required to design and publish an annual plan that sets out response time targets. This document is titled the Response Time Standard (RTS) Plan. Each year, by the end of October, for Upper Tier Municipalities (UTM) and Designated Delivery Agents (DDA) must approve and submit the RTS Plan for the following year.  This Report sets out the targets for 2025. 

Response Time targets capture the time from when Paramedic Services are advised to respond to a call until Paramedics arrive at the scene. The Response Time targets also are stratified by the patient severity determined by the Paramedics once patient contact is made. The tool for defining patient severity is the Canadian Triage Acuity Scale, with ranking patient severity between Canadian Triage and Acuity Scale (CTAS) 1 as the most severe, to CTAS 5 as the least severe. 

Additionally, the plan must identify Response Time targets for sudden cardiac arrest incidents.   The target time for Sudden Cardiac Arrest calls has been set established by the Province of Ontario at six (6) minutes while the target time for CTAS incidents has been established by the Province of Ontario at eight (8) minutes. In each of these subsets, Manitoulin-Sudbury DSB sets the percentage of the times that Paramedics will meet the target times.  

Manitoulin-Sudbury DSB sets the response time targets times and expected percentage compliance for CTAS 2 to 5 incidents.

Each spring, each UTM and DDA must report on their Response Time Standard target success for the previous calendar year. As such, in March of 2025, Manitoulin-Sudbury DSB will be required to report target success for 2024. 
        
Current State

Response Time Standard planning by Paramedic Services leadership has historically worked to evolve targets in a cautious manner that considers several factors.  Increased deployment of resources, the development of the non-urgent patient transfer services, and growth of the Community Paramedic program are all factors that are considered when developing a solid plan.

Recent deployment changes where resources were added on Manitoulin Island helped to ensure target times were achieved. Despite this, staffing challenges, geography, and lengthy transport time to hospitals across the districts remain impactful on the ability to respond to patient needs quickly. 

Opportunities 

A number of actions are being developed by Paramedic Services staff in an effort to help mitigate impacts on responding resources.  These include the development of a recruitment and retention plan, a plan that will work with departing personnel to assess why staff are leaving, a plan that will ensure recruitment of paramedics can be expedited and will meet emerging needs, and a plan that can assess how to evolve service delivery in an environment where candidate availability is a challenge.  

Paramedic Services staff are working to expand the relationship with Allied Services to increase medical-tiered response agreements across the districts. The addition of response agreements with communities where possible could reduce time to scene and improve target compliance.

2025 RTS Targets 

The efforts currently underway to improve deployment, and expand relationships with partners, will require time to prove beneficial. With that in mind, staff proposes maintaining the 2024 target response times in 2025.  

*Targets established by the Province of Ontario