Lambton Emergency Medical Services [EMS] wants to build a new headquarters, two new stations, buy more ambulances and hire a dozen full-time employees to cope with increasing calls.
The ideas have been outlined in a master plan presented at a Lambton County Council committee meeting recently.
Manager Stephen Turner said 9-1-1 calls for ambulance service have increased 5.6 per cent each year for the past five years, and six per cent increases are expected annually for the next five years.
He said changes in social conditions and an aging population are contributing factors.
"It's significantly higher than the increase in the population rate within Lambton County, which is around 0.25 per cent per year," Turner said. "Our call volume growth is almost 24 times what population growth is. So, we need to take a look and see what we can do to position ourselves best for the future."
Turner said resources have been reviewed, operational changes have been considered, and whether or not additional resources are needed has been discussed and improvement is needed on all three fronts.
"We're looking at adding three daytime service cars to meet peak demand," he said. "We would look at relocating a few stations. Our Bright's Grove station [would be moved] to around the [Highway] 402, [Highway] 40 area, creating a station in Camlachie and moving our Grand Bend station a bit further southwest toward the Pinery so that we can provide better geographic coverage."
In total the purchase of six ambulances is also proposed, so between 16 and 20 million would be needed to cover capital costs.
"We're going to need some new full time positions too. So we're looking to hire 12 full-time positions over the next five years in order to meet some of that service demand," said Turner.
The master plan has been referred to county council for full consideration November 29.
"We've tried to create a plan that's spread out over five years, to lessen the impact in any given budget year and try to keep the impact on the property tax levy as low as possible," he added.
Lambton EMS operates out of ten stations, with 82 full-time 9-1-1 paramedics and eight community paramedics, 70 part-time paramedics, plus supervisors and administrative staff.