Paramedics win back no-response buffer

The City of Ottawa must reinstate a 30-minute window at the end of paramedics shifts when they don’t respond to calls, an arbitrator has ruled.
The city took away the end-of-shift buffer on March 3 to satisfy Ontario Ministry of Health investigators, who were probing complaints from border municipalities ticked off over sending ambulances into rural Ottawa to fill empty coverage areas without receiving compensation.
Ottawa’s updated deployment model came with two significant changes: