Paid ambulance staff too expensive for Haines Junction, Yukon gov't says

A Yukon government pilot program in Haines Junctionlast summer has determined that it's too expensive to have paid ambulance staff based in the community.

The territory's Emergency Medical Services (EMS) hired six emergency responders last summer to work in HainesJunction for three months. The community had beenhaving troublefinding enough volunteers to offer the ambulance service, especially in summer.

The paid staff, however, were not busy enough to justify the cost, said Yukon EMS director Jeff Simons. Much of their time was spent "standing-by".

"We paid people full time wages to wait for an ambulance call," he said.

"When we did the math and ran all the numbers, out of the roughly 2,000 hours that were worked over the summer, there was 200 hours of actual operational work."

A government report found that the cost-per-call during the three month pilot program in Haines Junction averagedmore than $4,000. By comparison, the averagecost-per-call in Carmacks and Teslinwhere the EMS needs are similar and volunteers are on standby was about $1,000.

"A full-time staffing model is not financially advisable in any community where call volumes average less than one call per work day," the report states.

The pilot program in HainesJunctionalso beefed up efforts to recruit and train more EMS volunteers, something mayor Michael Riseborough was pleased with.

"Itreallyis up to the community to try and work withinitselfto try toincreasethe number of volunteers," Riseborough said.

According to the government report, the Haines Junction project showedthat inexperienced community volunteers can be EMS-trained in aboutfive weeks. The report says similartraining would also work in other Yukon communities.