The Victorian Parliament’s upper house would establish an inquiry into the performance, workplace culture, and procurement practices of Ambulance Victoria.
The Nationals’ Member for Euroa, Annabelle Cleeland, said conversations with local paramedics since the inquiry was announced last month indicated there was a long road ahead towards a better system – particularly when it came to ramping issues.
“I am hearing that ramping issues at regional hospitals have at best remained the same, with some saying the issues have gotten even worse in recent weeks,” Ms Cleeland said.
“Emergency departments at the Northen Hospital are seeing over 15 ambulances ramped for over 2 hours at a time, often meaning all of the available resources are stuck in one place at the same time.
“With ramping at an all-time high, hospital staff had recently resorted to doing CT scans, X-rays, blood draws, and ECG’s all whilst the patient is still on the ambulance stretcher.”
Ms Cleeland said paramedics still had concerns about the lack of specialised Mobile Intensive Care Ambulance (MICA) units in the southern Hume region that covers much of the Mitchell Shire.
“The Mitchell Shire, one of the fastest growing parts of our state, does not have a MICA unit to cover a population of more than 50,000 people,” Ms Cleeland said.
“Instead, paramedics are waiting on these to come from other areas, most frequently Melbourne, who are having to come from around 50km away despite the situations being emergencies that require rapid responses.
“One recent instance saw a Melbourne MICA crew dispatched 125km away for a cardiac arrest in Eildon after previously being sent to Seymour for a previous incident.
“This is simply unsustainable and is putting patients in our regional communities at risk.”
The most recent Ambulance Victoria data indicated alarming shortcomings when it comes to response times for code 1 emergencies across the region (the most serious and urgent cases).
Ambulance Victoria’s official response time targets are that 85 per cent of code 1 emergencies are responded to within 15 minutes.
However, in Benalla just 63.9 per cent of ambulances responded within this time, in Mitchell Shire it was just 55.5 per cent, and in the Strathbogie Shire just 32.7 per cent of ambulances arrived within the 15-minute target.
“Labor cannot manage our ambulance system and our paramedics and those in need of urgent medical help are the ones paying the ultimate price,” Ms Cleeland said.
