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.
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.