Ms ROSOL question to MINISTER for HEALTH, MENTAL HEALTH and WELLBEING, Mrs ARCHER
[10.38 a.m.]
In early March, Ambulance Tasmania sent a taxi to transport a patient to Launceston General Hospital when their partner called 000 while they were unresponsive during a seizure. We now know that in just the first nine weeks of this year, when 165 Tasmanians called 000 for an ambulance, they were sent a taxi instead. This is shocking. People who are sick or injured enough to need medical care are being put in taxis. You claim all patients are assessed according to their clinical need, but how can you possibly defend using taxis in place of ambulances? No matter how amazing our triage staff are, the phone is no substitute for paramedic assessment and care on the ground. Do you agree using taxis instead of ambulances places patients at increased risk? Will you commit to funding and recruitment so this doesn’t happen?
ANSWER
Honourable Speaker, I thank the honourable member for the question. Our government is really proud of our dedicated ambulance officers and volunteers who work tirelessly to safeguard our communities. I want to be very clear that, actually, when you do say these things, you are attacking those hardworking clinicians and those hardworking volunteers. I don’t claim –
Members interjecting.
The SPEAKER – Order. I appreciate the importance of the question. I do ask that the minister be heard in silence, please. There are other forms of this House if members do not agree with her response: you can ask further questions, you can do an MPI, there is adjournment, or you can actually move a substantive motion. I ask that the ministers be heard, please.
Mrs ARCHER – I don’t claim that patients are triaged according to their clinical need; they are triaged according to their clinical need. Our government will always back our healthcare workers who make those clinical judgments every day, under very challenging circumstances. Our comm centre staff are committed to providing high quality and timely care, including making sure that the most urgent cases are responded to first. All requests for an ambulance are triaged by priority, based on the urgency of the case and the information available at the time. The system prioritises potentially life threatening conditions so they’re responded to as quickly as possible.
Ambulance Tasmania also actively monitors all wait times for patients awaiting a response. When an extended wait time is experienced, clinicians make regular contact with the caller to further assess a patient’s medical condition, including referral through the secondary triage service if appropriate. Our highly trained secondary triage clinicians make medical assessments based on the symptoms present and provide the most appropriate response option based on those medical assessments and the resources available. When additional information is received through followup calls and conversations, the priority of a case can be upgraded or downgraded as needed, based on the assessment of a clinical need. This is standard practice and helps to prioritise the allocation of ambulance resources.
Where patients are not assessed as requiring an emergency ambulance response, Ambulance Tasmania’s secondary triage service can consider alternative care pathways and transport options if it is safe and clinically appropriate to do so.
Supplementary Question
Ms ROSOL – I thank the minister for her answer, I am seeking clarification about whether you think an assessment over the phone is ever going to be as good as an assessment by a paramedic? Do you expect patients to take their own observations while they’re waiting for an ambulance? Will you fund the ambulance service so this kind of thing doesn’t have to happen in future? It’s not okay to have a taxi sent instead of an ambulance.
Mrs ARCHER – It is safe when it is assessed to be clinically safe and appropriate to do so. I’m not going to make an apology for that. I’ve outlined the reasons for that and I think it’s extraordinary that you would question the 000 call-takers and the ability of them to clinically assess appropriate to need.
