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Last month, Alberta health officials celebrated a milestone for the province’s EMS-811 Shared Response Line, announcing the program had diverted more than 50,000 non-urgent 911 calls and freed up those ambulances for truly life-threatening emergencies. A closer look at the data shows that the majority of the calls referred to the health line bounced right back to EMS.
As part of its plan to improve emergency response times and eliminate what had become frequent code reds in Alberta cities, where no ambulances are available to respond, the United Conservative government introduced the shared response program in 2023, which lets 911 operators transfer non-urgent calls to 811 Health Link to speak with a nurse or health care practitioner.
At the time, the government estimated that up to 20 per cent of 911 calls didn’t require an ambulance and anticipated the program would save paramedics as many as 40,000 unnecessary calls each year.
Health Link manager Edith Friesen told CBC Edmonton in August that although it took longer than expected, the program had freed up 50,000 ambulances and ensured they “were used for life-threatening emergencies and not for situations where it wasn’t.”
Internal documents obtained by the Investigative Journalism Foundation show that thousands of these calls referred to Health Link were returned to EMS after the patient’s needs were determined to be serious and required immediate clinical care. Thousands more were sent back to EMS because of “transport needs,” meaning the patient had no other way of getting to the hospital. In other cases, ambulances were assigned because nobody was available to take the call at Health Link within three minutes.
Between January 2023 and August 2025, fewer than 19,000 calls received assistance from Health Link and did not require an ambulance.
Dr. Luanne Metz, NDP MLA and official opposition future of health care critic, said the program clearly isn’t as effective as it was intended to be, given that the government said 40,000 calls per year would be diverted, “and the real numbers show they were able to divert less than half that over 2.5 years.
“While diverting calls could be helpful this sounds like it is simply adding a delay for half the calls diverted,” Metz said.
Metz said more paramedics are needed to provide a lasting fix to the ongoing staffing shortages and growing call volumes the health line was intended to address. Instead, the government is “focused on manipulating and withholding information to make it appear they are doing what needs to be done to get people the emergency care they need.”
Kristen Anderson, a media advisor for Alberta Health Services, said they are exploring alternative transportation options to prevent more unnecessary ambulance responses.
“We continue to evaluate the program through quality assurance processes and adjust as necessary based on the findings. However, preventing nearly 19,000 unnecessary ambulance responses is a tremendous success,” Anderson said.
Data from AHS released through an access to information request suggests many of the issues with the shared response line have persisted throughout the life of the program. At the end of 2023, 17,113 emergency callers were referred to Health Link. Of these, 23 per cent were sent back to EMS for clinical reasons, 29 per cent were returned to an ambulance for transport, and 6 per cent were reported as no caller contact (e.g. a call was disconnected, or an evaluation was not able to be completed.)
By October 2024, the number of calls sent to Health Link had climbed to 32,981, and there was virtually no change in the proportion of calls being returned to EMS: 22 per cent were returned for clinical reason, 30 per cent were returned due to transport needs, and 6 per cent were returned due to no caller contact.
Anderson told the IJF of a more current sample of 27,000 calls returned for ambulance dispatch, 43 per cent were redirected for clinical reasons.
Since the shared response line program was introduced, Danielle Smith’s government substantially restructured Alberta’s health care system, breaking AHS into four new agencies: Acute Care Alberta (ACA), Primary Care Alberta (PCA), Recovery Alberta and Assisted Living Alberta. The Health Ministry was also subdivided into four new cabinet positions: assisted living and social services, mental health and addiction, hospital and surgical health services, and primary and preventative health services.
The restructuring appears to have created confusion about who is now responsible for the shared response line introduced by Alberta Health.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Hospital and Surgical Health Services, the government department now overseeing ACA and EMS policy, told the IJF questions about the program should be directed to the health agencies ACA and PCA.
The Ministry of Primary and Preventative Health Services, the ministry in charge of PCA and Health Link, also would not answer questions about the shared response line and referred the IJF to ACA and PCA.
Nicole Merrifield, executive director of engagement and external relations for PCA, said she couldn’t speak to government intent or policy.
Neither ministry replied to subsequent emails about the shared response program and whether the government still believed it would be able to free up 40,000 ambulances per year, or divert between 10 and 20 per cent of non-urgent calls from the 911 system.
A report from PricewaterhouseCoopers found that call EMS call volume had increased by 39 per cent between 2017 and 2022. The demand for emergency response has continued to grow along with Alberta’s population boom. In March 2022, AHS estimated that EMS responded to 589,500 events each year. By September 2024, AHS was reporting 724,288 EMS responses annually.
Merrifield said PCA is continuing to work on the Health Link programs and looking for opportunities to improve access for Albertans.
“We’re seeing 19,000 successful diversions as a success in the initial work. So, the program has been up and running for two years, and we’re certainly looking at ways to further increase calls coming into 811, to make sure that Albertans are receiving the right care that they need when they’re making that call,” Merrifield said.
Metz said that if the government wants to find solutions to ambulance shortages and staffing problems, it needs to work with paramedics to improve working conditions and retention.
“We have a system where more paramedics are off on stress leave related to work than all other health professionals combined. We need to address that. Solutions will only be successful when they are developed collaboratively with paramedics,” she said.
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