Emergency Health Service | 13
which guards against redundancies and oth-
er cracks through which inefficiency could
creep in, Nickerson says. For example, sig-
nificant effort is put into ongoing education
and quality improvement initiatives across
the system.
Ultimately, that means EHS oversight of
all the moving parts is critically important.
Benefits to private partners in the EHS
system include long-term contracts, certain-
ty, performance-based incentives, leverage
of profile with other jurisdictions leading to
additional business opportunities, and an in-
tegrated provincial system allows opportu-
nity for innovative solutions and models of
service delivery – such as the extended care
paramedic and community paramedicine
models.
“We strategically work closely with our
partners so we all understand desired out-
comes and expectations. When people go
in to do a job, they understand what the ex-
pectations are and what they need to do to
perform,” Eden says. “All of us are working
together.
“The outcome of the design has been ex-
cellent patient care province-wide, high pub-
lic confidence in the EMS system, interna-
