‘It's getting worse’: Town of Essex urgently calls on province to help fix growing ‘code black’ crisis

The Town of Essex is making an urgent appeal to the province to take decisive action to resolve gaps in the local healthcare system, after three code blacks were issued in Windsor-Essex over the past week.

A code black occurs when offload delays at the hospital are so severe, there aren’t any ambulances left to respond to calls.

According to Essex-Windsor EMD Chief Bruce Krauter, the county ambulance system experienced code black situations on May 8, then again on May 12 and 13.

"It's not getting better. In fact, it's getting worse," said Essex Coun. Kim Verbeek after a meeting of council Monday night.

Mayor Sherry Bondy brought forward an emergency motion during a regular meeting of Essex Town Council, noting it’s time to get everyone talking about the issue.

"This is not the time for any elected official in Essex County to sit back," Bondy said. "We need to bring in all our MPPs and say, hey, what's going on here locally in Windsor Essex, and why are our ambulances so backed up at our hospitals?"

Chief Krauter presented data at county council last week, detailing how the issue is going from bad to worse.

In 2021, he said Windsor-Essex experienced 791 minutes in code black.

The region saw that number climb to 2,257 minutes in 2022.

"We need to dig deep right now because we're seeing that it's not getting better and we can't let it get worse and worse," Bondy said.

Essex Council unanimously approved the motion, which will send letters to every municipality in Ontario as well as local MPPs and the province, imploring them to complete a comprehensive review of offload delays. The motion said noting if nothing is done, local families risk catastrophic consequences.

"Certainly I just feel like we shouldn't limit who we send this letter to. It's all hands on deck right now," said Verbeek.

Mayor Bondy also wants the government to ensure the hospital system can keep up with growing needs of today and the future.

"Are we keeping up?" asked Bondy. "We are growing and we have many baby boomers here, so we need to make sure that the number of beds matches our population that we have."