Tuesday, 16 August 2022

Ambulance services

Ms MAXWELL (Northern Victoria) (19:40): (2046) My adjournment is to the Minister for Ambulance Services, and the action I seek is for the minister to urgently establish a community paramedic trial site, expand the use of paramedic practitioners and dedicate additional ambulance resources to Indigo shire communities. Issues have plagued ambulance service delivery in this region for years, and the situation only continues to deteriorate. This is not because of COVID, though it is very apparent that the pandemic has made a bad situation worse. Ambulance Victoria performance data for the April to June quarter showed the service on average got to a code 1 call-out patient inside the 15-minute target in just two of the 27 local government areas in my electorate.

Paramedics are doing their absolute best to respond to these critical emergency calls, so why were response times between March and June going backwards in 21 of 27 local government areas in Northern Victoria from one year to the next? Indigo shire gets the wooden spoon for the worst ambulance response times in Victoria almost every quarter, year after year. Only one in five call-outs arrived inside the critical 15-minute benchmark in the June quarter. In an emergency, if you call one it takes 25 minutes and 35 seconds to get to you on average. That is 3 minutes and 40 seconds longer than a year ago.

Trials were announced in 2018 for the advanced paramedic roles implementation pilot. The trials in Ouyen and Tallangatta have been well received and provide a stopgap in small towns that are challenged by GP shortages and long delays in accessing primary health care and where ambulances are constantly diverted out of town. But this needs to be embedded across our regional communities as a matter of urgency and should incorporate community paramedics outside of Ambulance Victoria to maximise the use of available resources. Both the paramedic practitioner model and the community paramedic programs are evidence based. Across our Australian jurisdictions and around the world they are proven to reduce emergency department presentations and improve patient care. These programs have been running for more than 15 years in other jurisdictions, while Victoria has only 16 paramedic community support coordinators across the state. The government is ploughing hundreds of millions of dollars into recruitment, training and more emergency call takers, but communities are yet to see any significant improvements in performance response, and our resolute, hardworking paramedics remain under sustained pressure.

In a letter late last month I encouraged the new Minister for Health to consider how the government could alleviate demand on our ambulance and hospital services. I again advocate for public investment in community paramedic services like HMS Community, who are already working in central Victoria. Danny Hill from the ambulance services union said on radio last week that a shift in thinking is required and alternative pathways. These are practical solutions, and lives remain at risk without urgent action. Our community want to chip in as participants in the Country Fire Authority first-responder pilot to help with code 1 call-outs until an ambulance arrives.