Huron County's Director of Emergency Services Presented County Council with a Comparison of Response Times with Other Services This Week
by Bob Montgomery
Huron County's Director of Emergency Services presented county council this week with a comparison of response time in other counties dealing with similar situations.
Jeff Horseman says council wanted to see how Huron compared with other similar counties and whether there was a need to make any changes. Horseman says his report goes a little bit deeper into what the Response Time Plan means and the different categories that fall within the Response Time Plan. Horseman says that report is an information report and council can now look over it and determine if they feel there's a need to make any adjustments, or ask for further input for potential adjustments. Horseman says council will have the opportunity to make some recommendations for the 2025 standard when that's presented in August or September of 2024. Council will also see a report in the spring that gives the response time results from the 2023 year. That report has to be reported to the Ministry of Health so they can publicize it.
Horseman says the province sets the response time, in minutes, for the two most critical calls they encounter and then council has the option of setting the percentile that they're hoping to achieve on those calls. But Horseman says it's very difficult to make a comparison with other counties because there aren't very many other counties similar to Huron County in size or population density or several other characteristics that make comparisons difficult. He says Bruce County is probably the most accurate for comparison purposes in Southern Ontario and Lanark County and Lennox and Addington County in Eastern Ontario are also close.
Horseman says Huron County's overall average response time for all calls was ten minutes and twenty-two seconds. That result was within about twenty seconds, either better or worse, of the comparable counties, so he's quite happy with that result.
