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Ottawa’s paramedic service has “an overall, ongoing and systemic problem” that leaves patients waiting for ambulances coming from far away even though closer ones are available, a Ministry of Health investigation has found.

The city has even violated numerous rules and standards for how it’s supposed to dispatch ambulances, the ministry says.

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In one case, on a night the investigators studied, firefighters tried for 17 minutes to resuscitate a patient on Stonehenge Crescent in Pineview before the first ambulance arrived. The nearest one was five minutes away at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, but its paramedics were nearing the end of their shift so they weren’t sent.

The patient died.

One dispatch centre, run by the City of Ottawa, orders ambulances around across Eastern Ontario. Emergency services in nearby towns and counties have complained for months that Ottawa relies on them to rush to patients in places such as Cumberland and West Carleton because Ottawa ambulances that are supposed to be in suburban and rural Ottawa are constantly being called to help downtown.