Summerside, PE - Premier Dennis King released the first of many important innovations and plans from the PC Party healthcare platform today that focuses on reducing pressures on Emergency Departments and bolstering PEI’s ambulance services.
Premier Dennis King makes an announcement in Summerside on reducing pressures on emergency departments and bolstering our ambulance services along with (L to R) Tyler DesRoches, Barb Ramsay, Hilton MacLennan, and Gilles Arsenault.
Over the past four years, the PC government under the leadership of Dennis King has made record investments in healthcare including hiring new doctors, expanding primary care access sites, building Community Health Centers, and partnering with post-secondary institutions to train more healthcare providers on Prince Edward Island.
A re-elected PC government would introduce new measures to support Emergency Department staff and patients, and introduce tools to reduce the volume of patients and pressure on Emergency Departments.
These initiatives include:
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Adding Physician Assistants and Nurse Practitioners to provide care to patients in Emergency Rooms;
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Adding Care Providers and Patient Advocates to support patients in waiting rooms at Emergency Departments;
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Making Apps like Maple and other virtual care apps free for all Islanders to reduce the pressure on Emergency Departments; and
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Establishing a multi-disciplined task force to create an action plan to expedite offload delays for ambulances at hospitals.
In addition, investments will be made to strengthen the ground ambulance service on Prince Edward Island to reduce response times, train more paramedics, and focus on getting care to Islanders in emergency situations quicker and more efficiently. These investments would include:
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Providing free tuition for Primary Care and Advanced Care paramedics in exchange for two years of service on Prince Edward Island;
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Adding four new full-time ambulances, 7 days a week to the roads to reduce response times;
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Provide up to $20,000 in additional annual funding to fire departments that offer Medical First Responder services in communities across the province;
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Providing funding to organizations such as Pat and the Elephant, Transportation West, and others to do the non-urgent transfer of medically stable patient transfers on PEI. This funding would include covering transportation costs as well as providing funding for the necessary equipment and vehicles to provide patient transfers; and
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Provide recruitment incentives for hard-to-recruit paramedic positions to ensure positions are filled and units are staffed.
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