A brand-new base for Renfrew County Paramedics was unveiled in Eganville Friday.
The base is located at the old O’Grady’s Brothers garage on Highway 41 in Eganville, creating the seventh such base for paramedics in the region.
“This base represents really, the heart of the county,” said Renfrew County Chief Paramedic Mike Nolan at Friday’s grand opening.
“It is centrally located. It gives us access to a lot of areas that have been historically underserved.”
Nolan says the base will service an area of roughly 1500-square kilometres.
Until opening, paramedics working in the Bonnechere Valley region operated out of the township’s municipal office, sharing a garage with the local fire department.
“We were at a point where we didn’t have the ability to keep the paramedic resources inside the base,” Nolan says.
The new paramedic base now has four bay doors and can house three ambulances and a paramedic SUV.
The building has also been renovated to offer paramedics a full kitchen, lounge, bathroom, locker, and quiet room areas.
Notably, Renfrew County Paramedics will also operate a Virtual Triage and Assessment Centre out of the new base, the fifth of its kind in the county.
Known as RC VTAC, the centre will be a health care service available to those in the community without a family doctor.
Residents will be able to contact RC VTAC with health concerns and if needed, attend the centre to receive in-person care.
“If that assessment needs to be completed in person, the community paramedics now have two clinical offices here where you can be invited at a specific time to finish your assessment and be able to get all of the services you need in the same day,” says Nolan.
Other RC VTAC locations in Renfrew County are found in Arnprior, Renfrew, Pembroke, and Petawawa.
Residents are able to contact RC VTAC at 1-844-727-6404 24 hours a day, seven days a week.