Emergency Health Services

Emergency Health Services (also EHS) is a division of the Department of Health in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia.

It is responsible for the province's pre-hospital emergency health services, including 152 ground ambulances and their support facilities, two helicopters and a fixed-wing aircraft, and approximately 900 paramedics.

Many ground ambulance support facilities are co-located with municipal fire stations in smaller rural communities, while having customized paramedic stations in larger centres. Every hospital in the province and many community health centres have helipads for EHS air ambulance service.

EHS operates a central communictions dispatch centre in Burnside Business Park in Dartmouth for coordinating emergency medical services across the province.

History
Until 1995 Nova Scotia relied on approximately 50 private and public ambulance operators to provide emergency medical care. This resulted in inconsistencies in terms of medical care, levels of staff qualifications, and the type and condition of ambulances; some areas of the province had better service than others.. Most medical air transportation was provided by the Canadian Forces.

In 1994, a transformation of the system began with the provincial government taking over all ambulance operators and consolidating them into a single entity called Emergency Health Services. The operation of EHS is contracted to Medavie Blue Cross and it has since developed into a recognized world leader in pre-hospital care.

LifeFlight
LifeFlight is the name of the air ambulance service operated by Emergency Medical Care (EMC), a subsidiary of Medavie Blue Cross, which provides medivac transport to EHS in Nova Scotia, as well as equivalent organizations in the adjacent provinces of Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick. The service originated under EHS and served Nova Scotia exclusively before subsequently expanding to the neighbouring provinces and being sub-contracted.

LifeFlight is a 24-hour/day air medical transport service for emergency, neonatal, and hospital transfer transport. Most of the missions are for hospital to hospital transfer where the patient requires advanced medical treatment at another facility, usually at the Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Center in Halifax.

To date, there are 82 helicopter approved landing zones in Nova Scotia that are Transport Canada certified with additional helipads in Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick. Most of the time, in the case of a motor vehicle accident, the highway itself is used for landing and take-off. Numerous volunteer fire departments and Department of Natural Resources depots are also used in rural areas where rotor clearance permits.

LifeFlight uses the Sikorsky S-76-A as its primary mode of transport and a King Air 200 as its secondary mode of transport.

Atlantic Health Training and Simulation Centre
The Atlantic Health Training and Simulation Centre is a training facility for emergency medical services personnel such as paramedics.

Medical First Response Program
The medical first response program is a volunteer mostly rural program to train people to give first aid and give relevant medical information to paramedics before they arrive. The people trained are referred to as Medical First Responders (MFR)'s.

Nova Scotia Trauma Program
The Trauma program is to facilitate optimal trauma care by providing education, research leadership in injury prevention and control and trauma system development.

EHS facts

 * Paramedics are members of the International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 968
 * Dispatchers are members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers
 * From the start of the air ambulance service on May 13,1996 to December 31,2003 there have been 3,682 LifeFlight missions
 * The ground ambulance fee can range from $120 to $600 depending on the call. If a person has no insurance to cover the fee a monthly payment as low as $5.00 without interest can be paid.