Ambulance Victoria falls short of urgent response targets

Despite some improvement, Ambulance Victoria once again failed to meet key targets around responding to urgent cases.

Ambulance Victoria has fallen short once again of meeting its Code 1 response benchmark. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Geraghty

Ambulance Victoria has again failed to meet its key targets, with just 67 per cent of urgent cases responded to within the 15 minute benchmark.

The figures, released by the state government on Friday as part of quarterly health data for the October and December period, represents a slight improvement from the previous quarter.

But it’s the 16th consecutive quarter where Ambulance Victoria has fallen short of its benchmark for 85 per cent of all Code 1 cases to be responded to within 15 minutes.

Paramedics were faced with their second busiest quarter on record during the last three months of last year, responding to 154,267 emergency cases including 99,833 Code 1 cases – the second most on record – and 54,434 Code 2 cases.

The statewide average response time to get to Code 1 emergencies dropped from 16 minutes and 44 seconds to 14 minutes and 58 seconds.

Ambulance Victoria’s clinical operations executive director Anthony Carlyon said it is the first time in more than two years that paramedics had got to lights and sirens cases under 15 minutes.

“While there is more work ahead of us, it is encouraging our response to Code 1 emergencies improved a full minute and 46 seconds compared to a year ago,” Mr Carlyon said.

Health and Ambulance Services Minister Mary-Anne Thomas said despite the demand, it is positive that Code 1 performance times had improved.

“No doubt there is more work to do,” she said.

“I really want to see some improvement in ambulance response times but I want to take this opportunity to congratulate Ambulance Victoria and our hard working paramedics all the work they’ve done to show some really significant uplift in ambulance response times.”

More to come