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.