On Ambulance Staffing, Transfer of Care …

Media release – Cecily Rosol MP, Greens Health spokesperson, 1 May 2024

Ambulance Short Staffing Putting Workers and Patients at Risk

There’s no service more important to our community than Ambulance Tasmania, but patients and ambulance workers are being let down by a Rockliff government that won’t do what’s necessary to address massive issues in the system.

The Mercury’s report about an ambulance communications worker that suffered serious psychological damage due to critical staff shortages was deeply distressing. What’s even worse is that right across the state we have staff in the ambulance service who are experiencing real suffering and harm.

Tasmanian health staff do an amazing job under terrible circumstances, but they continue to be let down by the Rockliff government. The result is terrible strain on staff, and patients being put at greater risk because they can’t get an ambulance in a timely way in an emergency.

The head of Ambulance Tasmania himself says that a quarter of all emergency calls in Tasmania don’t have an ambulance allocated within the required timeframes. And every second hour there’s an emergency requiring an ambulance that is left waiting for more than 35 minutes for it to arrive. When every minute counts, 35 minutes is an eternity.* But still the government have refused to invest in the staffing their own experts recommended was needed to deliver safe and reliable response times.

We know ambulance staff are suffering significant psychological damage thanks to understaffing, and we know patients are being put at significant risk too. But what we don’t know is the true extent of the harm being caused by ever-increasing delays to ambulance responses. On top of improving staffing and services, this is another critical issue the government must address.

The Greens released a comprehensive plan for a safe and reliable ambulance service during the recent state election campaign. Our plan invests in every element of ambulances services – from on-road paramedics, to the communications centre, expanding secondary triage, new vehicles, building stations, and much more. This is what Tasmania needs, and we’re committed to fighting hard for real action throughout this term of parliament.

*Key facts on ambulance services in Tasmania (with references) available here.

Media release – Guy Barnett, Minister for Health, Mental Health & Wellbeing, 1 May 2024

Positive progress on transfer of care protocol

The implementation of the 60-minute transfer of care protocols across the Tasmanian health system is already showing positive results with the overwhelming majority of ambulance transfers to hospitals occurring within 60-minutes.

Minister for Health, Mental Health and Wellbeing, Guy Barnett, said that the Tasmanian Government is committed to ending ramping in Tasmania.

“We are seeing positive results across the state as we implement this new protocol, with hospitals in the North and North West both performing particularly well and on target,” Minister Barnett said.

“In the South, despite experiencing significant pressures at the Royal, the protocol has improved the capacity in our health system.

“We have been working closely with our healthcare workers, Ambulance Tasmania, the unions and our departments to ensure that the implementation of this protocol is done in a considered, strategic way, and does not compromise the healthcare of Tasmanians.

“I want to thank our dedicated healthcare staff who are making this possible and I am grateful for the contributions of all stakeholders.

“We are taking a measured approach to the continued roll-out of this protocol as we continue on our way to the national best-practice benchmark of 30-minutes.”

State Secretary of the Health and Community Services Union (HACSU) Robbie Moore said much work still needs to be done to address the high demand we are seeing across our health system.

“The new Transfer of Care procedures (Ambulance Offload) have resulted in significant improvements moving patients off the Ambulance Ramp and through the Emergency Department,” he said.

“‘What has been particularly pleasing is that whilst there has been significant demand over the past week, both hospital and ambulance staff have worked extremely well together to address the challenging circumstances.”

Average offload duration over the last week:

• R Hobart Hospital – 54.2 minutes;
• Launceston General Hospital – 39.7 minutes;
• Mersey Community Hospital – 26.3 minutes; and
• North West Regional Hospital – 27.3 minutes.