Adjournment
Tania MAXWELL (Northern Victoria) (18:34):
My adjournment is to the Minister for Ambulance Services (Hon. Mary-Anne Thomas MP) 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-June quarter showed the service, on average, got to a code one 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 are 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 35 seconds to get to you, on average. That’s 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 stop-gap in small towns that are challenged by GP shortages, 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 community paramedic programs are evidence based. Across other Australian jurisdictions and around the world they are proven to reduce ED presentations and improve patient care. These programs have been running for more than 15 years in other jurisdiction while Victoria has only 16 Paramedic Community Support Coordinators across the state.[i]
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, hard-working paramedics remain under sustained pressure.
I’ve brought attention to the issues my electorate continues to face with Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority call-handling, ambulance emergency response times, hospital ramping and how community paramedics and first-responder services could be expanded to reduce the strains on our health system.
In a letter late last month I encouraged the new Health Minister to consider how the government could alleviate demand on our ambulance and hospital services.
I again advocated for public investment in community paramedic services, like HMS Community who are already working in central Victoria and the North East, to keep people out of emergency queues. Our community wants to chip in as participants in the Country Fire Authority first responder pilot to help code one call-outs until an ambulance arrives.
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.
[i] https://www.premier.vic.gov.au/giving-paramedics-new-skills-and-rural-communities-better-care/
