STANDING COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION —DELIVERY
OF AMBULANCE SERVICES IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA: CRITICAL CONDITION —GOVERNMENT
RESPONSE
449. Mrs L.A. MUNDAY to the Minister for Health:
I refer to the McGowan Labor
government's response to the Standing Committee on Public
Administration's final report into the delivery of ambulance services
in Western Australia that was handed down earlier today.
Can the minister advise the house
how the action this government has committed to take will help to improve
emergency care as well as support country ambulance services, and can the
minister outline what actions have already been taken to address the challenges
facing our health system?
Ms A. SANDERSON
replied:
I thank the member for Dawesville
for her question. I know that she is deeply passionate about this issue, being
a former paramedic and her partner also being a paramedic. I am proud that we
support candidates and members in this place from a broad range of experience,
with real on-the-ground experience of what it is like to do this work. I thank
her for her commitment, and her commitment to pursuing the improvements in
recognising PTSD in our paramedics and our ambulance workforce.
We provided a thorough and rigorous
response to the parliamentary inquiry into ambulance services. That inquiry
produced an entirely unanimous report containing 48 recommendations. Committee
members represented the government, the Liberal–National coalition and the
crossbench. We have supported 46 of the 48 recommendations in principle or in full. They will improve the
on-the-ground relationship with St John and the Department of Health and
the health service providers and hospitals and improve good ambulance care in Western
Australia. We want to improve access to emergency departments and review the
triage accuracy, coordination of dispatch, the diversion of patients to more
clinically appropriate alternative pathways and enhance competition in
inter-hospital patient transfers. We are going to modernise the contract. We
have good public–private partnerships in place with Midland Health
Campus and Joondalup Health Campus, and strong relationships. They work in a coordinated
way with the department. We want to bring St John into that relationship.
We have a new service delivery model
for country ambulances, with a record $50 million investment in paid paramedics
in regional areas. We continue to support the training and rollout of those
professional paid paramedics in regional areas. We want to improve access and
equity and support vulnerable patients who may not want to call an ambulance because of the fee and how we can
support those patients around those fees and, importantly, improve
access for remote Aboriginal communities to ambulance services. We are seeking
to strengthen the governance, transparency
and accountability for the taxpayer in this contract and require St John to
meet Australian Institute of Company Director standards for
not-for-profits. This is a very standard approach. It is a good approach. It is
solid governance and it will produce an excellent ambulance service moving into
the future.