Tuesday, 30 April 2024

Ambulance services

Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (19:12): (849) My adjournment matter this evening is for the attention of the Minister for Ambulance Services. Jess told Jacqui Felgate’s 3AW program today of her harrowing experience last Saturday morning. Jess’s 12-year-old son was playing footy when he was tackled to the ground and fell unconscious. He was unresponsive, badly concussed and in shock. Jess and others followed advice from the AFL HeadCheck app and called 000 immediately to request an ambulance. After an hour and a half his condition had worsened. He had neck stiffness, headaches and nausea. These symptoms can be extremely dangerous. Jess called 000 back as her son’s symptoms had worsened and was told that they were in the queue for an ambulance. Although only 5 minutes from the Bendigo Hospital, still no ambulance had arrived after 2 hours and 45 minutes, so Jess and others made the difficult decision to transport the injured child themselves to the emergency department. On arrival at the ED they were astounded to find ambulances ramped. In fact at 2 pm on Saturday at Bendigo Hospital there were at least seven ambulances ramped.

Instead of being able to respond to Victorians in need, paramedics and ambulances are regularly ramped at Victoria’s EDs across the state. There were reports last week that over a dozen ambulances were ramped outside Frankston Hospital, and last night in Box Hill over half a dozen ambulance crews were waiting up to 3 hours to offload patients. In early April there was ramping at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, at Sunshine, Ballarat, Box Hill – the list goes on. The system is in crisis. Ambulance response times across regional Victoria remain well under the government’s own targets, and in Bendigo, where this incident occurred on Saturday, just 63 per cent of ambulances arrive within the 15-minute target time frame – the government’s own target time frame.

These issues are not new. The issues in health were there well before COVID, and the situation since COVID has only deteriorated. Our hospitals are carrying huge deficits, some in the hundreds of millions of dollars. They literally are running out of cash. Agency staff are booked to work shifts and then cancelled an hour before they are due to start. Amalgamations of rural and regional health services will only make matters worse – Victorians will have to travel further to receive care and ambulances will have to travel further to respond to patient emergencies. Minister, given the shocking state of Victoria’s health system, the action I seek is that you look into the matter of Jess and her son and provide an explanation as to why no ambulance arrived when they called one when they needed it.