SNEMS Headquarters - (CJ Goater/Acadia Broadcasting)

Superior North EMS is getting a boost in base funding to help combat the rising costs of land ambulance operations.

SNEMS is getting a 13 per cent increase bringing the province investment in the service to $18,962,078 for the year.

“This is really helping lessen the impact on our service and really helps being able to keep up on par with those cyclical replacements,” said SNEMS Chief, Shane Muir. “Unfortunately the costs of equipment and ambulances have over doubled since the pandemic, and some of those things were really difficult to budget for and we don’t want to put all that burden back onto the taxpayers of the city of Thunder Bay or in the region. The province has really stepped it up to offer us that assistance to be able to help with some of those costs, so really, we’re maintaining our service.”

The province also announced funding to help expedite the process between dropping a patient off at the hospital and getting back in the field.

The province is investing $226,076 in Thunder Bay through the Dedicated Offload Nurses Program to hire more nurses and other eligible health professionals dedicated to offloading ambulance patients in hospital emergency departments.

“So that position is in place at the hospital as patients come in via 911 services through the ambulance, they check in with the charge nurse, that charge nurse will assess the acuity of the patient and the terminal location of where to go if that’s going to be a low acuity patient where they would be put into offload delay,” explained Muir. “That’s when the dedicated offload nurse would come in, take over patient care and get the ambulance back onto the road.”