Tiered Medical Response Expected To Bring Better Patient Outcomes

Thursday, 15 March 2018 at 05:34

The Tiered Medical Response Agreement between Oxford EMS, the Township of East Zorra-Tavistock and the East Zorra-Tavistock Fire Department has been revised.

OXFORD COUNTY - Oxford County has approved the revised Medical Tiered Response Agreement for the Township of East Zorra Tavistock.

The agreement is between Oxford EMS, the Township of East Zorra-Tavistock and the East Zorra-Tavistock Fire Department. EMS Chief Ben Addely says the new agreement updates the protocol on when the Fire Department will come and assist on medical calls.

"So what we have actually done is we have been looking at our tiered response agreements and we try to revise them and Taylor them to the individual municipality based on several things. The first and foremost of that is basically the medical evidence to show what are the types of calls in which quicker rapid response, utilizing a tiered response program would benefit the patient outcome. In addition to that we look at the resources of the individual municipality, whether their fire service is volunteer or a full time fire department, because that is going to have an impact on their response times in their community."

Addely says the number one priority they have with early response medical calls is for cardiac arrest.

"The medical evidence really shows a benefit to patient outcome by early response is the cardiac arrest patient. So getting trained responders, whether that is community responders, volunteer firefighters, full time firefighters, paramedics getting to a cardiac arrest call to start CPR and early defibrillation. So that's the number one priority that we try and capture. There is a different subset of calls that could potentially end up in more acute patients such as, unconscious patients, respiratory arrest, drowning patients that could lead to CPR and defibrillation, that is our main priority."

Once the new agreement is approved by both councils it will be forwarded to London Central Ambulance Communications for implementation on April 15th.