Wait up to 12 hours for an ambulance in Montreal

An octogenarian who had to go to an emergency room in Montreal on Sunday morning was told he would have to wait all day before accessing an ambulance.

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Solange Perreault, an 86-year-old woman who lives at the Alfredo-Gagliardi residence, had to go to the emergency room for a non-life-threatening health issue.

“The residence called an ambulance to take her to the hospital because she could no longer walk because one of her legs didn’t work. But the waiting time was twelve hours this morning,” his daughter Nancy Doucet told QMI Agency.

To avoid this waiting time, M^me Doucette decided to leave her home on the North Shore to bring her mother. Luckily, she had a wheelchair at home so he took her to the hospital.

“It wasn’t easy there. I wouldn’t stay in Montreal. I had to leave home to go to Montreal. It wasn’t instant,” commented M.^me Doucette on the phone in the afternoon, waiting to see a doctor in the emergency room with her mother.

Tough weekend

Jean-Pierre Roulau, head of department and spokesman for Urgens-Sante, admitted that the weekend was difficult for paramedics and that “it is very possible that some patients will need to wait for ten, twelve hours”.

“It’s not what we want, it’s not the norm,” Mr Rowley said.

According to him, the paramedics of Urgence-Sante, which covers Montreal and the island of Laval, had to deal with about a thousand calls per day on Friday and Saturday, a number that forced the organization to apply its recovery plan. Calls according to their severity.

“Our goal is to minimize fatalities,” said the public relations officer, who, when possible, invites the public to prioritize other options, such as calling 811 or finding other means of transportation than an ambulance.

There is still a shortage of paramedics in the metropolis, with Urgens-Sante struggling to get enough people on the streets despite the use of overtime.

“We want to hire more than 100 paramedics. We’ve reached thirty this year. There’s a shortage of about 60, 70 people that we can’t put on the ground,” said Mr Rowley.