AMBULANCE RAMPING
820. Ms L. METTAM to the Minister for Health:
I refer to the November monthly
record of 5 767 hours of ambulance ramping, which has added to the highest ever
annual ramping figure of more than 60 000 hours this year so far. Given that
ramping figures are now the highest ever recorded under the minister's
watch, has she simply given up on the Labor Party's 2017 election
promise to reduce ambulance ramping?
Ms A.
SANDERSON replied:
The numbers for ramping this month
are tracking downwards from the peak that we reached in winter, which everyone expected because we were in the middle of
a pandemic dealing with a COVID peak and a large number of respiratory illnesses. We had to cope with
furlough, respiratory illnesses and so on and so forth. In the last 12 months,
the state government has put 483 beds into the system that will help to ease
some of those flow pressures that we see around ramping. One of the key things—I
have said this many, many times—is that this is an issue around all the pinch points across the whole spectrum of
system, which includes access to primary care and a GP when needed, as
well as access to the emergency department, processes within hospitals,
discharge processes and the ability to discharge
people into appropriate settings when they are medically fit for discharge. As
we know, significant numbers of people can be ready and medically fit but
cannot be discharged because of the paucity of appropriate aged-care facilities.
That was driven down and into the ground by the former federal government.
One
of the key interactions with the system is our ambulance service and how it
functions. I want to bring to the attention of the house, including the
opposition, a letter I received today from St John Ambulance about its
performance over the last few months and some of the key performance indicators
that it has been meeting. It had a tough time at the beginning of this year and
that saw a significant intervention by the state government in which senior
emergency response personnel from the Department of Health and Western Australia
Police Force were put into St John to work with it to ensure that it was
meeting the standards within the current framework and resources. I will quote
from the letter —
The initiative built new cooperation,
engagement and understanding between St John, the Department of Health, WA
Police Force and the Department of Fire and Emergency Services.
At the time of the intervention, the
St John Priority 1 response Key Performance Indicator for 90 per cent of cases
responded to within 15 minutes was 74.9 per cent.
�
Since
working more closely with our interagency colleagues, St John delivered five
months of consecutive improvement in Priority 1 response to 84 per cent
of responses within 15 minutes during November, and Triple Zero � calls
answered with the 10 second benchmark has remained above 90 per cent since June.
Congratulations to St John for its
work. Congratulations to the interagency team that went in there. I note that
in the contribution from the member for Vasse last week, she criticised this
response and called it a failure. She called it a failed intervention response.
The numbers do not lie and they come from St John.