Health Sciences North Centre for Prehospital Care is an Ontario Base Hospital.

A Base Hospital is a hospital that has applied for and been designated as such by the Minister of Health and Long Term Care. A Base Hospital provides medical direction, leadership and advice in the provision of ambulance based prehospital emergency health care within a broad based, multi-disciplinary community emergency health services system in a specified geographical area. Base Hospital is a resource centre and facilitator assisting in ensuring that ambulance based pre-hospital care and transportation is meeting each community’s needs. The Base Hospital also functions in an advisory capacity to the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care on matters relating to ambulance based prehospital emergency care.

Health Sciences North was designated as a Base Hospital by the Ministry of Health in 1986 (formerly the Sudbury General Hospital then Sudbury Regional Hospital). At that time, the Base Hospital was involved solely with the Ontario Air Ambulance Program. The program expanded to include Land Ambulance in 1988 with the advancement of land ambulance paramedic skills from Basic Life Support (BLS) to Advanced Life Support (ALS) including semi-automatic defibrillation and the administration of Symptom Relief drugs. In 2008, Ontario Base Hospitals were realigned which resulted in a reduction of Programs from 21 to 7 and in 2009 the Sudbury Regional Hospital was designated as the Host Hospital for the Northeastern Region. Our core functions include: On-Line Medical Direction; Certification and Medical Delegation at the level of Primary Care Paramedic (PCP) and Advanced Care Paramedic (ACP), a rigorous Quality Assurance Program to ensure the safe delivery of pre-hospital care and Medical Education to 9 Designated Delivery Agents, encompassing 11 land ambulance services, and over 750 paramedics.