Hospital backlogs, few staff delay response times

Delays an average of 8 minutes, says city auditor report

- MAHDIS HABIBINIA

Response times for the city’s paramedics rose to an average of almost eight minutes for the highest-priority calls last year, nearly exceeding legislated targets, according to a city’s auditor general report released Thursday.

The report primarily blamed the increase on off-loading delays, the amount of time it takes paramedics to transfer patients at hospitals, which rose between 2019 and 2023, according to the report.

The city’s auditor general also noted chronic understaffing of paramedics at the same time as there are a rising number of calls from Torontonians without a family doctor who rely on paramedic services as “a safety net” for basic health care.

According to the report, which will be debated at council next month, every day last year there were 2.5 hours on average where the service only had five staffed ambulances available across the city. The number of instances where there were no paramedics available spiked from 29 in 2019 to more than 1,200 in 2023, with each occurrence lasting an average of two minutes.

“Those numbers are shocking. Those are real world impacts,” said Peter Shirer, vice-chair of the Toronto Paramedic Services Unit at CUPE Local 416.