The Nationals’ Member for Mildura, Jade Benham, says with regional Victoria’s dangerously below par ambulance response times it is essential people make submissions to the parliamentary inquiry into the performance, workplace culture, and procurement practices of Ambulance Victoria.
Ms Benham says with the Victorian health system in crisis, our overworked and undermanned ambos are reaching breaking point.
And she says people are now paying with their lives for the failure of the Allan Labor government to adequately staff and fund the vital frontline service.
“The most recent Ambulance Victoria data indicates alarming shortcomings when it comes to response times for code 1 emergencies across the region (the most serious and urgent cases),” Ms Benham adds.
Ambulance Victoria’s official response time targets are that 85 per cent of code 1 emergencies are responded to within 15 minutes but according to Ambulance Victoria’s Annual Report, many areas are nowhere near those numbers in the 2022/23 reporting period,” she says.
“Some of the figures might not seem a huge difference, but minutes, even seconds, count when lives are on the line. In some regional areas that number plummets into the 50 and 60 per cent deciles.
“The inquiry is seeking submissions from the public, with both employees and patients encouraged to contribute, and the Legislative Council Legal and Social Issues Committee will inquire into everything involved with call taking, dispatch, ambulance ramping, working conditions and workloads of paramedics, governance and accountability within Ambulance Victoria (AV).
“Sadly the cost of the government’s refusal to address the collapse of the health service, which is even seeing ambulance staff dragooned into helping out inside hospitals, is a matter of public record,” she says.
“There have been people in regional Victoria who have paid the ultimate price, because ambulances were not available, or have had to come from other sites, often an hour or more away.
“I particularly encourage anyone who has had any experience with Ambulance Victoria (AV), to provide their feedback – this inquiry is a fantastic opportunity for people to share their lived experience with our ambulance system.”
Ms Benham says having heard from paramedics, patients and family members of AV users in his region, it has been made quite clear there is a lot of work to be done to resurrect the current chaos.
She says apart from the deaths attributed to late ambulance responses, other more frequent concerns brought to his attention include slow response times, ramping outside our hospital emergency department, late or delayed ambulance dispatching along with AV rostering concerns.
“I’m pleased that despite Labor’s bid to gag anyone looking into its incredibly serious shortcomings, the Upper House of the Victorian Parliament supported this important inquiry and there is the possibility of change on the horizon,” Ms Benham adds.
Submissions close on February 28, with public hearings to be scheduled thereafter.
