BC Emergency Health Services provides provincial emergency medical care and patient transfer services.
Visit bcehs.caBCEHS oversees the BC Ambulance Service and BC Patient Transfer Services.
The reach of BCEHS is vast, with 184 ambulance stations and several administrative offices spread throughout the province. Over 4,000 people work at BCEHS as paramedics, dispatchers, patient transfer call-takers, managers, physicians, and in administrative support and corporate services functions.
Since 1974, BC Ambulance Service (BCAS) has been providing expert pre-hospital care to patients when a medical emergency occurs. BCAS is an organization that is rich with tradition and holds a strong commitment to providing timely and high quality patient care to citizens across BC.
BC Emergency Health Service's Community Paramedicine program offers primary care by paramedics, primarily for rural and remote communities that have aging populations living with chronic and complex diseases. The program helps bridge health service delivery gaps identified in collaboration with local health care teams. As of Spring 2022, since it was rolled out in 2016, community paramedics had made more than 97,000 patient visits.
BC Emergency Health Services provides the following types of patient transfers:
- Pre-booked inter-facility patient transfers that require an ambulance and paramedic care
- Critical care transfers between health care facilities for critically ill or injured patients who need highly specialized care from a paramedic, or who are travelling long distances
- Infant Transport Team critical care transfers for pediatric, neo-natal and high-risk obstetrics patients
