Patient transfer units were supposed to ease pressures on N.B. paramedics, but some sit idle

Many patient transfer vehicles in New Brunswick are not in use.

They were supposed to help ease pressures on the health-care system by freeing up ambulances, but since being introduced in August 2023, the multi-patient transfer vehicles (MTS) have mostly sat idle.

Chris Hood, executive director of the Paramedic Association of New Brunswick, said Ambulance NB has had trouble staffing them.

“That’s why they haven’t moved is because there’s nobody sitting in those vehicles to do the work,” said Hood. “It isn’t the fact that the work isn’t there.”

Former Health minister Bruce Fitch launched the vehicles more than two years ago. Staffed by emergency medical technicians (EMTs), the vehicles can transport up to four people at a time for non-urgent, low-acuity transfers (acuity four or five on the Canadian Triage and Acuity Scale), like taking a nursing home patient to a hospital appointment, or transferring a patient from hospital to hospital. They are able to transfer a patient in a wheelchair.

At the time, Fitch said about 50 per cent of the transfers ambulances were making were considered non-urgent and could be completed by the MTS units.

In their first full year of operation, the unit in the southern region only made four transfers. In the west – which includes Fredericton – there were 28 transfers.

But the unit in the Moncton region made 607 transfers. That unit is the only one in the province that can transfer a patient in a stretcher.

Through the first six months of 2025, the MTS unit in the south has only moved twice. The vehicle in the west has made 11 transfers. The unit in the Moncton region has made 247 transfers.

It shows what kind of volume the vehicles are capable of, when properly staffed, Hood says.

“I think it’s a symptom of the bigger, bigger problem - the problem of staffing overall in the system,” he said. “I think this morning, I was told there’s 127 empty positions in the system… I think one would say that the multi-patient transport unit is a fabulous idea. It requires a bit more work, but it’s like many other things in life, it’s the nice to have versus the must haves. So it’s always the last one to get staffed and the first one to lose it.”

Hood described a situation in summer of 2024, when the ambulance system had about 57 vehicles unstaffed, unable to run, throughout one August weekend. Normally, it would have 80 to 90 vehicles staffed, he said.

There are about 1,300-to-1,350 EMTs and paramedics in the system. Most – about 90 per cent – are primary care paramedics.

Hood says there are positive changes being made on the education side, including a $6.5-million announcement by the Susan Holt government to help fund paramedics and EMTs training if they commit to a ‘return-of-service’ contract with Ambulance NB

Data provided by Medavie Health Services New Brunswick show the majority of non-urgent transfers are being done by their patient transport units (PTUs) which is a fully stocked ambulance, being operated by a primary care paramedic and EMT.

Those units made 20,297 non-urgent transfers in 2024, of the 24,136 that were made in total.

Medavie did not provide an interview on the topic.

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