New Brunswick's paramedics union says it raised many of the concerns more than a year ago that were outlined in an independent report released on Thursday into an ambulance mix-up in Fredericton Junction.
The report written by Richard Brady, a senior Ontario health department official, indicated the delay in arriving at the home of Cody Jones, 14, was caused by road closures in the area and a lack of communication between the emergency vehicle and the dispatch system.
Ralph McBride, the co-ordinator for Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 4848, said many of these issues have been highlighted by the union since Ambulance New Brunswick took over the province's ambulance service in December 2007.
"The paramedics in the field have identified these issues to Ambulance New Brunswick EMS, through management meetings with the union," McBride said.
"There's nothing that hasn't been brought up. It's very unfortunate that they had to have a tragedy in Fredericton Junction for the government to finally listen."
Jones died on April 2 after it took 57 minutes for a second ambulance to get to his Fredericton Junction home after the original emergency vehicle went down a road closed due to flooding and got stuck on a different back road.
ANB working on reforms
Arnold Rovers, the interim chief executive officer of Ambulance New Brunswick, agrees that the union did raise concerns about support systems to orient paramedics to rural areas. Rovers said Ambulance New Brunswick has been working on improvements to the system.
"We were in the process of developing those support systems in the ambulances," Rovers said.
"The mapping books that are in the ambulances are part of the process. They need to be improved and we were working on that process. We've escalated that process obviously as a result of this particular event."
Rover said a global positioning system will soon be installed in all emergency vehicles that will provide maps of where the ambulance is and where the call is coming from.
He said that should help eliminate problems that led to the incident in Fredericton Junction.
