Montreal-area paramedics say new dispatch system causing problems, delays in response times

From scouring a crowded screen just to find important information, to racing to a caller's home only to discover they’ve already been taken to hospital, several Montreal-area paramedics say the new computer-aided dispatch system in their ambulances is plagued with problems — and they fear it’s putting patients at risk.

Urgences-santé, which offers ambulance services in Montreal and Laval, launched the new computer system in May. The program connects dispatchers to paramedics out on the road in real time, providing them with patient information, addresses, directions and more. 

Some front-line workers say the transition has been difficult, and they worry it could affect how fast they’re able to get to patients in an emergency. 

CBC News spoke with five paramedics who say they’ve been sent out to respond to 911 calls unnecessarily — either because the call had already been handled by another team and reappeared in the system or because several ambulances were dispatched to the same call.

Two paramedics described incidents where they had been preparing to get the door opened by force because they couldn’t get a response from the patient, only to realize just in time the call was a duplicate.

Urgences-santé and the union representing paramedics say they don’t have any reports of doors being mistakenly broken down. 

CBC is not naming the paramedics because a clause in their contract prevents them from “speak[ing] badly about their employer or hurting their reputation in any way,” their union confirms, and they fear repercussions for speaking out.

Paramedics said these duplicate calls occasionally happened with the old system but that they ramped up in the first few months after the new model was implemented. A few told us they were still happening over the last few weeks. 

“The union absolutely believes that the [CAD] is causing significant delays in its current condition and we can see that by all of the reports that we’re being sent by multiple different paramedics,” said union representative Charles Duff Murdoch with the Syndicat du préhospitalier (FSSS-CSN).

“If an ambulance is sent twice on the same call, obviously that second ambulance that could be used somewhere else is causing delays for other calls.”

He says these glitches make their already packed days more challenging.

Urgences-santé insists there’s been no impact on patient care since the CAD was implemented, adding that “growing pains” are to be expected with every new system. 

“We’re making sure the double calls don't happen. They have happened in the beginning. We are six months into the implementation of our new system. So there's still a learning curve that we're in,” said Jean-Mari Dufresne, operations supervisor at Urgences-santé. 

He added the system is in “evolution” and that new features should be able to prevent the duplicates down the line.