Demand for ambulance service in the Central Okanagan may be growing but that has not stopped the B.C. Emergency Health Services from reducing service in Kelowna.
Last week, in an unannounced move, the service quietly cut the number of ambulances available in the city to seven from 10. And that is expected to have an even greater ripple effect on the entire region says the union that represents ambulance paramedics in B.C.
“This is a big issue,” said Troy Clifford, provincial president of the Ambulance Paramedics and Emergency Dispatchers of B.C.
He said Kelowna is not alone in losing ambulance service in the province and given that ambulances from outlying areas are used to help meet demand in larger centres, service in the smaller surrounding communities, like Lake Country, West Kelowna and Peachland will also be adversely affected.
The three ambulances cut were added in 2019 as part-time resources, part of the province’s plan to add more ambulance service to rural, remote and indigenous communities. But an agreement in September between BCEHS and the paramedics union made 25 of the 55 ambulances added in 2019 full-time. Some of the areas that benefitted were Penticton, Salmon Arm, Oliver, Ashcroft, Chase and Merritt.
Clifford said a second set of negotiations to try and make the remaining 30 ambulances added in 2019 full time—some in larger communities like Kelowna and Kamloops—was to have taken place in October. But he said BCEHS “did nothing.”
“We have been asking for weeks about this,” he said.
