ORNGE’s airborne misadventures have come crashing to earth and extend to its land ambulances as well, says Auditor General Jim McCarter.
Since 2008, ORNGE has received nearly $13 million a year to transfer a projected 20,000 patients by road. But it transports only about 15 per cent of that number, or 3,000 people, McCarter discovered in his probe of the troubled agency.
The government gave the money blindly and never bothered to find out “how many transfers ORNGE has actually made,” the report noted.
“We are not getting what we are paying for,” McCarter said Wednesday during the release of his report. “The ministry was in the dark, they just didn’t know.”
Progressive Conservative MPP Frank Klees wasn’t surprised there are big problems in ORNGE’s land services.
“That is another one that is brewing,” Klees said. “The number of stories I am getting about what is going on in land ambulance transfers is huge, we just haven’t had the time to talk about it.”
In many critical cases in the Greater Toronto Area, ORNGE had to rely on Toronto Emergency Medical Services (TEMS) to handle patient land transports — but they paid them only a fraction of what it cost the ministry.
When ORNGE enlists TEMS to provide an inter-facility transfer, they pay the municipal service $1,700 for each case. But ORNGE budgets $7,700 for that same patient land transfer, or 7 per cent less than the $8,300 it costs by air, the auditor found.
“Toronto is handling quite a bit of the load and they are doing it for significantly less,” McCarter said. “We said to the ministry, ‘Are you aware of these data, these numbers?’ ”
The municipal land ambulances often told McCarter they couldn’t respond quickly to 911 emergency calls because they were busy doing hospital-to-hospital patient transfers that ORNGE should have been doing.
“There were concerns expressed in the medical community about it,” he said. “If you are slow in responding to a 911 call, it is quite possible that patients could be at risk.”
ORNGE also bought 18 land ambulances for $2.1 million between August 2006 and January 2007, and they were given a free vehicle by a municipality. However, ORNGE just decided to use eight, leaving them with 11 extras, the report noted.
The auditor also discovered an overall ORNGE system that doesn’t record the times of key events in dispatch and patient transfers, thus making it almost impossible to assess performance standards.
Original Article
Source: Star
Author: Tanya Talaga, Rob Ferguson and Kevin Donovan
Since 2008, ORNGE has received nearly $13 million a year to transfer a projected 20,000 patients by road. But it transports only about 15 per cent of that number, or 3,000 people, McCarter discovered in his probe of the troubled agency.
The government gave the money blindly and never bothered to find out “how many transfers ORNGE has actually made,” the report noted.
“We are not getting what we are paying for,” McCarter said Wednesday during the release of his report. “The ministry was in the dark, they just didn’t know.”
Progressive Conservative MPP Frank Klees wasn’t surprised there are big problems in ORNGE’s land services.
“That is another one that is brewing,” Klees said. “The number of stories I am getting about what is going on in land ambulance transfers is huge, we just haven’t had the time to talk about it.”
In many critical cases in the Greater Toronto Area, ORNGE had to rely on Toronto Emergency Medical Services (TEMS) to handle patient land transports — but they paid them only a fraction of what it cost the ministry.
When ORNGE enlists TEMS to provide an inter-facility transfer, they pay the municipal service $1,700 for each case. But ORNGE budgets $7,700 for that same patient land transfer, or 7 per cent less than the $8,300 it costs by air, the auditor found.
“Toronto is handling quite a bit of the load and they are doing it for significantly less,” McCarter said. “We said to the ministry, ‘Are you aware of these data, these numbers?’ ”
The municipal land ambulances often told McCarter they couldn’t respond quickly to 911 emergency calls because they were busy doing hospital-to-hospital patient transfers that ORNGE should have been doing.
“There were concerns expressed in the medical community about it,” he said. “If you are slow in responding to a 911 call, it is quite possible that patients could be at risk.”
ORNGE also bought 18 land ambulances for $2.1 million between August 2006 and January 2007, and they were given a free vehicle by a municipality. However, ORNGE just decided to use eight, leaving them with 11 extras, the report noted.
The auditor also discovered an overall ORNGE system that doesn’t record the times of key events in dispatch and patient transfers, thus making it almost impossible to assess performance standards.
Original Article
Source: Star
Author: Tanya Talaga, Rob Ferguson and Kevin Donovan
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