County committee hears good paramedics/paramedicine reports

Northumberland County Ambulance-Northumberland Paramedics Facebook.

By Cecilia Nasmith

The Northumberland County council Community Health Committee received some good news Tuesday from the Paramedics and Community Paramedicine services as they gave annual reports – including a 92.5% satisfaction rate with the paramedicine program.

Paramedics Chief Susan Brown reported that they met or exceeded their response-time targets for all classes of emergency call, ranging from non-urgent through life-threatening.

With stations in Cobourg, Port Hope, Colborne, Roseneath, Campbellford and Brighton, they cover roughly 1,905 sq. km. of land area, from which they got 19,096 calls in 2025. Their vehicles traveled 782,442 km. and ate up 192,504 litres of fuel.

Unfortunately, their off-load delays increased to 1,071 hours in 2025, up from 717 the year before. They have just applied for this year's funding for offload nursing assistance.

Depupty Chief of Operations Keith Barrett said they responded to 19,096 calls and recruited 10 new paramedics.

And their 10th annual Survivor Night – where they celebrate cases where a patient's heartbeat was restarted, featured 14 stories of survival. Two of the patients attended to offer a personal thanks to those involved in their resuscitation.

Deputy Chief of Community Paramedics Kim Wilkinson said they enrolled 561 new clients in 2025 for a total of 1,675 active clients throughout the county.

Their work provides non-emergency services to members of the community “to provide the right care to the right person in the right location, while allowing individuals to remain at home longer, safely,” Wilkinson's report said. This includes such things as education, medication management, paramedic referrals, blood draws, wellness checks, vitals and physical assessment, vaccinations and hospital-discharge and 911 follow-up visits.

New this year is their Virtual Wellness Library, accessible from clients' homes, to provide such things as recorded exercises and fall-prevention tips and even a fraud-awareness section and nutrition section (with links to some easy recipes). A summer student added cognitive-type activities such as word-search and soduko puzzles.

New partnerships are always expanding their services, such as the retinopathy scanning now done in partnership with diabetes specialists from the Community Health Centres of Northumberland.

Savings to the health-care system come in the form of fewer 911 calls and averted emergency-room visits.

And a survey they took in 2025 came up with that 92.5%-satisfied figure.