Emergency Services Commitment Policy
The Paramedic Services of the United Counties of Prescott and Russell are dedicated to ensuring the highest standard of emergency medical care for their communities. We are committed to:
- Providing an advanced or primary care response for every emergency call within our service area.
- Delivering professional, timely, and compassionate care, tailored to the needs of our patients.
- Ensuring the safety and well-being of our patients, our paramedics, and our communities.
- Continuously improving our practices through training, innovation, and collaboration with health and emergency services partners.
This commitment reflects our unwavering dedication to the health and safety of the people we serve.
Responsibilities
- Ensure the quality and support of services delivery in accordance with the standards and provisions of the Ambulance Act and the emergency medical services regulations.
- Ensure operational and strategic planning of the emergency medical services.
- Ensure the assessment, medical treatment, and transportation of patients by ambulance to hospital or other health care facilities.
- Offer advanced and primary pre-hospital emergency care.
- Ensure the growth and professional development of paramedics.
- Follow up on requests for access to patient records.
Financing
The province of Ontario transferred the financial and operational responsibilities of the land ambulance services to the United Counties of Prescott and
Russell on January 1, 2001. The cost of the services is equally shared
between the provincial and the regional governments.
Call Management
The Emergency Services of the United Counties of Prescott and Russell have nine ambulance stations and posts and over 120 employees.
How Are Calls distributed?
9-1-1 calls are directed to our Central Ambulance
Communication Centre (CACC), which is located in Ottawa and managed by
the City of Ottawa, under an agreement overseen by the Ministry of Health.
When a dispatcher receives a 9-1-1 call, they will ask several questions to match available paramedical resources to your medical condition and ensure that life-threatening patients receive immediate care. It is important that you stay in communication with the dispatcher and listen carefully to the instructions they give you, including confirmation that an ambulance is on its way.
Workforce Breakdown
Our paramedics are on duty 24 hours a day to ensure a
reasonable response time, despite the vast size of the territory we cover. Have you ever seen ambulances parked at certain locations and waiting? These strategic locations are established to cover a larger territory, because other ambulances are busy at the scene of an emergency and therefore unable to respond to new calls.
Ambulances are deployed out of four stations. These stations are in
Embrun, Hawkesbury, Plantagenet, and Rockland. We also have five waiting
stations located in Alfred, Bourget, Casselman, Vankleek Hill, and
St-Isidore.