Alberta Health Service has raised their target Ambulance response time to 12 minutes. A decision Cold Lake Mayor Craig Copeland feels is unacceptable.
Copeland says response times are often even worse than that around Cold Lake and Bonnyville at around 15 minutes, which can mean life or death in an emergency situation. Outside the major areas, times can reach as high as 45 minutes. He points to one recent incident as a particularly bad example. A car accident occurred “A stone’s throw” from the hospital, but it took 13 minutes for the first ambulance to arrive.
Copeland points towards insufficient provincial funding as a major issue as well. The Cold Lake Ambulance Society runs a deficit between 10 and 15,000 dollars a month.