COCHRANE DISTRICT — A new pilot project could help reduce emergency room wait times by helping long-term care residents receive care where they live.
The Cochrane District Paramedic Service (CDSP) is one of five Ontario regions — and the only one in Northern Ontario — chosen for the Community Paramedicine for Long-Term Care Plus (CPLTC+) program.
It has paramedics providing diagnostic services such as blood tests and ultrasounds at select long-term care facilities.
For the six-month pilot, the focus is on the Gold Manor, Extendicare, and the Timmins and District Hospital site at St. Mary’s in Timmins, and Extendicare and Foyers des Pionniers in Kapuskasing, said CDSP commander of community paramedicine Chantal Riva.
Two full-time paramedics have been hired in Timmins and one in Kapuskasing.
“Whilst this project is focusing on long-term care homes, we may be able to facilitate seeing patients who are unrostered (no family doctors) that the mentioned doctors refer to us,” she said.
A long-term care resident who is sent to the hospital for a urinary tract infection (UTI) can spend hours waiting to be diagnosed, Riva said.
“Sometimes they're at the hospital for two days for a simple UTI,” she said.
"The community paramedics are going to go into long-term care, do the testing right on the spot and say yes or no they have a UTI or whatever other illnesses they might have. And then the charge nurse is going to pass the information along to the doctor and then they can resolve the issue without patients even having to leave their home.”
As of June 2024, patients, on average, waited 1.5 hours to be seen at the Sensenbrenner Hospital in Kapuskasing, according to the province's emergency department wait times database. Timmins data wasn't available on the provincial site, however, on Friday (Sept. 6), there was a wait time of roughly 17 hours and 40 minutes for patients at the Timmins and District Hospital according to the hospital's website.
The other regions chosen for the program include Hastings-Quinte, Middlesex-London, Ottawa, and York Region.
It’s amazing to be the only Northern Ontario site, Riva said.
“Honestly, we have such a great team of community paramedics, they're so passionate, they're so involved,” she said.
Last year, their paramedics completed 5,500 home visits, Riva said.
"The work that we're doing is incredible, and the province recognizes it, and I feel like that's one of the reasons that we were selected,” she said.
The CDSP received $500,000 from the Ministry of Long-Term Care for the program that started Sept. 1 and runs until March 1, 2025.
CDSP will meet with the ministry at half-way through and at the end.
“With hospitals being so overwhelmed and inundated, ER diversion is the main goal. To keep people in their homes, healthy, happily, and safely,” she said.
“I'm not sure what metrics they're going to use to measure success, but in the meetings, they've said that even just good feedback from the long-term care homes and the community paramedic programs is important. The minister said that she expects it will go on past six months.”
Marissa Lentz-McGrath is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of TimminsToday, a publication of Village Media. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.
