A partnership between Kingston Health Sciences Centre (KHSC) and Frontenac Paramedics is helping ambulances return to the community more quickly after bringing patients to the Emergency Department, improving the community’s access to emergency medical services while enhancing patient flow inside the department.
This spring, ambulance offload times at KHSC’s Emergency Department were approximately 44 per cent lower than during the same time period from the previous year, despite the hospital operating at close to 100 per cent capacity. (Data from this summer is not yet available.)
The improvement follows more than two years of collaboration between frontline emergency department teams, hospital leaders and Frontenac Paramedics to redesign how patients arriving by ambulance are received and transferred into the hospital’s care.
“When paramedics can transfer care more quickly, they can get back on the road sooner to respond to the next emergency,” said Jason Hann, Executive Vice-President of Patient Care at KHSC. “This has been a true partnership, built around a shared goal of improving care for patients while strengthening emergency services for our entire community.”
The partnership got a boost in spring 2025, when Frontenac Paramedics and KHSC introduced an ambulance offload triage process to identify patients who were medically stable and able to safely stay in the waiting room rather than remain on an ambulance stretcher.
More recently, additional improvements have further streamlined patient transfers. Paramedics can now register appropriate “fit-to-sit” patients directly with registration staff before they await nursing assessment, allowing ambulance crews to complete transfers in just minutes. At the same time, a dedicated offload nurse now cares for recently transferred patients, enabling triage nurses to focus on patients requiring immediate medical assessment.
“These improvements demonstrate what’s possible when hospitals and paramedic services work together to tackle shared challenges,” said Jeremie Hurtubise, Deputy Chief of Operations for Frontenac Paramedics. “By reducing the time our crews spend waiting to transfer care, we’re able to return ambulances to the community sooner while ensuring patients continue to receive safe, high-quality care.”
The improvements have also been noticed by patients. Over recent months, compliments received by the Emergency Department have increased significantly, with many patients and families commenting on the team’s professionalism, compassion, and efficiency despite continued high patient volumes.
While emergency departments across Canada experience growing demand, KHSC and Frontenac Paramedics continue to identify new opportunities to improve patient flow using evidence-informed practices.
“Our work isn’t finished,” said Hann. “Every improvement we make helps us provide a better experience for patients while ensuring ambulances are available when our community members need them most.”
