THE state government has been accused of only telling “half the
story” of ambulance response times by Melton paramedics and opposition
MPs.
Figures released by the government last week detailed response times for the three months to March.
The government said Bacchus Marsh paramedics responded to 277
urgent code-one calls and reached the scene of “more than half” of them
within 15.25 minutes.
In Melton, paramedics responded to 401 code-one calls, with “more than half” of them reached within 11.31 minutes. The government has set a 15-minute target for paramedics to respond to code-one emergencies.
As reported by the Weekly, Melton teenager Brodie Wilson died in June after waiting 30 minutes for an ambulance to arrive from Sunbury.
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Melton paramedic Aaron Riding said: “We’re not getting there in
time. The fact they highlight that 50 per cent do get a response means
the other 50 per cent aren’t getting an ambulance in the right time.
“With response times greater than 10 minutes, for cardiac
arrests we know that for every minute that we don’t initiate treatment
there is a 10 per cent reduction in survival.
“After 10 minutes, the survival rate is basically gone. To have a
15-minute target response time is greater than what is appropriate for
clinical standards.”
Health Minister David Davis said the government had added more than 190 paramedics in the metropolitan area in the past three years.
But Mr Riding said the government failed to mention an increase in workload, which had grown “four times as much as our resources”.
Melton Labor MP Don Nardella said he did not want to see any more tragedies.
“That’s my greatest fear – we’re going to have these avoidable tragedies because ambulances are ramped at hospitals,” he said.
Opposition health spokesman Wade Noonan said the government was
attempting to “paint a rosy picture” about ambulance response times.
“Mr Davis should be telling the community what’s happening in the
other 50 per cent of cases, where the ambulance service is consistently
failing to perform.”
