Emergency Health Services

Land Ambulance Key Performance Indicators

The ministry uses numerous methods to monitor land ambulance and communication services performance indicators which measure, track and monitor the overall system performance – ensuring the most appropriate patient care available, enhancing ministry oversight and driving system performance.

The ministry has expanded on the key performance indicators (KPIs) for land ambulance performance measurements that are available to the public. The KPIs will include legislated response time reports, new response time measures and patient outcome-based indicators.

The legislative response time standard submission timeline requirements are established by Regulation 257/00 Part VIII under the Ambulance Act.

• All Upper Tier Municipalities and Designated Delivery Agents (UTMs/DDAs) under the Ambulance Act, Regulation 257/00 are responsible for the establishment, monitoring, reporting and evaluation of response time performance plans and performance achieved for patients categorized as CTAS 1 to 5 and SCA patients, which are submitted to the ministry on an annual basis:

1. Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA) Patients: The percentage of times that a person equipped to provide any type of defibrillation has arrived on-scene to provide defibrillation to sudden cardiac arrest patients within six minutes.
2. CTAS 1 Patients: The percentage of times that an ambulance crew arrived on-scene to sudden cardiac arrest patients or other patients categorized as CTAS 1 within eight minutes.
3. CTAS 2 to 5 Patients: The percentage of times that an ambulance crew has arrived on-scene to provide ambulance services to patients categorized as CTAS 2, 3, 4 and 5 within the response time targets set by the municipality.

• Dispatch centres have similar responsibilities and must report to the ministry (annually) its response time performance plan and performance achieved regarding the percentage of times it dispatches an ambulance within two minutes for SCA patients or other patients categorized as CTAS 1.

The patient outcome based performance measures focus on the ambulance patient journey to the health care facility. The expanded public reporting format on response time performance (dispatch and ambulance services) include influencing factors such as population and geographic data (population estimate, land area and population density) for ambulance services and call volume information for dispatch services. These influencing factors allow for the uniqueness of each municipality and dispatch centre.

• Stroke Patients: Ambulance stroke patient mortality rate (risk adjusted for 30 days) transported to an emergency department (ED).
• STEMI Patients: Ambulance STEMI patient mortality rate (risk adjusted for 30 days) transported to an emergency department (ED).
• Dispatch Response Time: Average time from 9-1-1 call receipt to dispatching an ambulance for code 4 (highest priority) calls.
• Ambulance Response Time: Average travel time to the patient for code 4 (highest priority) calls.

Please click the links below to access the reports on the land ambulance key performance indicators: The response time information on this site is a representation of variety of performance measures that the ministry is monitoring and reporting to the public to increase transparency and accountability on ambulance system effectiveness:

• Response Time Reports
• Mortality Rates for Stroke
• Mortality Rates for STEMI