Plans are underway to get a special response health team to deal with falls by senior citizens.
The Hastings-Quinte Emergency Services Committee heard a report that the department has applied for $905,000 in special provincial funding. Emergency Services CAO Connor Dorey says, “The number of falls has increased by 300 per cent over the last six years so we were doing about 1,000 fall calls. Now we’re doing 4,000 fall calls.”
“So, we said, you know, we need to come up with some strategies as to how we treat and assess these patients in their homes, rather than just an ad hoc sending them into the hospital for assessment.”
“We’re looking at an advanced assessment team that could respond in tandem to an ambulance.”
“So this emergency response vehicle would be equipped with an advance care paramedic and an occupational therapist. And the hope there, would be advanced assessment skills that they have they’d be able to safely determine whether or not a patient needed to go to hospital.”
“The funding opportunity is up to two million, we’ve asked for $900,000 and some of that is associated with salaries for the occupational therapist during the period of time we would be running this response team.”
