Ottawa paramedics miss target for life-threatening calls

Ottawa paramedics met response time targets for most medical emergencies in 2025 but fell short on the most critical calls.

Paramedics have a target of eight minutes to reach the highest-priority calls on the Canadian Triage Acuity Scale — categorized as CTAS 1 for life-threatening emergencies. They achieved that response time in 70.4 per cent of CTAS 1 calls last year, missing the council-approved 75 per cent target.

For lower-priority calls, paramedics met or exceeded targets across the board: 75 per cent of urgent calls (CTAS 2) within 10 minutes, and calls ranging from 15 to 25 minutes for less-acute emergencies.

Response times for sudden cardiac arrests — the most time-sensitive emergencies — reached 75 per cent of calls within the six-minute target, up significantly from 48.4 per cent in 2022.

"Going back four years, our service was not great," Chief Pierre Poirier told the emergency preparedness and protective services committee on June 15. Council approved a new investment strategy in 2022, and the service has hired 141 personnel over the past four years, focusing on response time improvements as call volume increased significantly.

Paramedics have drastically reduced "level zero" events — periods when no crews are available citywide. In 2022, paramedics were unavailable for 73,060 minutes; last year that dropped to 866 minutes. The service has also cut hospital offload delays, reducing the time paramedics spend transferring patients to emergency department staff. At The Ottawa Hospital General campus, delays fell from 163 minutes in 2022 to 58 minutes last year.

Single-response paramedics are now deployed to urban areas including Lowertown, the ByWard Market, Sandy Hill, and Centretown to handle increased call volume related to the opioid crisis, deputy chief Greg Furlong said. Resources have also been added to rural areas like Kinburn, Richmond, and Metcalfe to improve response times across the city's vast geography.