Emergency Medical Communication Centres
The BCAS operates four Communication centres located throughout the province. The Vancouver Island Communications Centre (VICC), located in Victoria British Columbia is responsible for all ground ambulance deployment for Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands; the Lower Mainland Region Ambulance Communication Centre (LMRACC) deploys all ground ambulances in the Lower Mainland (i.e., Metro Vancouver & the Fraser Valley Regional District), the Sunshine Coast, as far east as Boston Bar and as far north as Pemberton; and the Interior and Northern BC Communications Centre (INBCCC) deploys resources to the remainder of the province, including the southern interior (Okanagan, Cariboo & Kootenays) and northern BC (Skeena, Northern Interior & Peace Regions, representing west-central, east-central and northern areas of the province, respectively). The fourth Communication centre, the Provincial Air Ambulance Coordination Centre (PAACC), is located in Victoria and has responsibility for coordinating and deploying of all air ambulance resources, whether they are used for scene responses, or for inter-facility transfers.
Each Communication centre is staffed with a mixture of Emergency Medical Call Takers (EMCT) and Emergency Medical Dispatchers (EMD). The Vancouver Communication system is the largest of the four Centres. A Communication Supervisor who is a barganing unit member, provides line supervisory support to Communication centre staff, with a Director and a Communication Superintendent managing the centre. Other centres have a Charge EMD in the role of Supervisor, with a Superintendent managing the Centre. Training for EMCTs and EMDs is provided in-house by the BC Ambulance Service.
The BC Ambulance Service utilizes the Advanced Medical Priority Dispatch System (AMPDS) to triage calls and a customized Resource Allocation Plan (RAP) to allocate First Responders, Primary Care Paramedics, and Advanced Care Paramedics to calls as needed. Communication personnel are current, or former field paramedics, with few exceptions.
Within the Metro Vancouver region, BCAS utilizes the E-Comm Wide-Area Radio Network for one-stop communication between police and fire agencies.
Read more about this topic: British Columbia Ambulance Service
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