24-hour ambos

By Casey Neill
EMERALD residents will benefit from increased ambulance services if the State Government is returned at the 27 November election.
But the Opposition says the government’s plan has ignored Belgrave residents’ safety.
Labor Party Gembrook MP Tammy Lobato welcomed a $340,000 Emerald Ambulance Station upgrade to a 24-hour service, including two additional stretcher vehicles and three extra paramedics.
Ms Lobato said the move would translate into quicker response times and better support for families.
In March, the Mail reported in ‘The pain of waiting’ that Emerald residents faced the longest wait for an ambulance in the state between November 2007 and October 2009.
Ambulance Victoria group manager Andrew Watson said they had seen a significant workload growth in the local area.
“This additional funding will help us improve our response times, maintain our high patient survival rates and reassure people that if they call us for help, we’ll be there,” she said.
But earlier this year the Coalition committed to making Belgrave and Emerald stations operational 24 hours a day with six additional paramedics for each at $120,000 a head.
The Liberal Party’s Monbulk candidate Matt Mills and Gembrook contender Brad Battin said the State Government had ignored Belgrave residents’ safety.
“Victoria’s ambulance service is struggling with increasing demand and the State Government has failed to adequately fund the system to meet the needs of growing communities like Belgrave,” Mr Mills said.
“Ambulance services across the hills region have been under pressure and communities like Belgrave are suffering with long delays becoming all too frequent.”
Ambulance Employees Association secretary Steve McGhie said the Emerald station already provided 24-hour service – it is staffed during the day and paramedics are on-call at night.
“But history shows that on duty paramedics respond quicker than in an on-call situation,” he said.
“The only concern is we have no idea when these upgrades are supposed to occur.”
Mr McGhie said Belgrave had only 12-hour peak period staffing and no-one on call.
“Belgrave should have been upgraded also,” he said.
The State Government announcement preceded an Auditor-General’s report on Victorian ambulance service access tabled in parliament last week.
Liberal Evelyn MP Christine Fyffe was “fuming” at the results, which revealed that in the Yarra Ranges 31.3 per cent of cases – or 1906 people – classified as Code 1 waited longer than 15 minutes for an ambulance.
Code 1 cases are time critical, such as a cardiac arrest or a serious traffic accident.
“The longer residents in the Yarra Ranges are made to wait for an ambulance, the longer they will suffer,” she said.
“In the worst cases some may lose their lives.”
Greens Monbulk candidate Jo Tenner called for urgent action.
“The report shows that Ambulance Victoria’s 15-minute response time target is not being met by the Belgrave and Montrose response branches,” she said.
“Ambulance services save Victorian lives. Any delay in fixing these problems is unacceptable.”
The Mail contacted the State Government but did not receive a response before deadline.