Ambulance Victoria staff sacked due to funding cuts

Executives at Ambulance Victoria have been axed and more staff cuts are looming as part of an overhaul that is set to affect frontline workers.

Ambulance Victoria has axed three executive jobs and Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas has refused to rule out further job losses across the health sector amid ongoing budgeting constraints.

On Friday, AV publicly announced that three executive positions would go and operating models overhauled, likely resulting in more staff cuts.

It comes as the Herald Sun revealed that hospitals across the state were making “difficult decisions” with health insiders warning mass cuts to frontline staff in order to adhere to strict new budgets issued by the state.

On Sunday, Ms Thomas addressed the media attempting to quell concerns, stating that the state had delivered “record funding” with its $8.8bn funding boost announced in the May budget.

Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas has refused to rule out further job losses across the health sector. Picture: Nicki Connolly

But she refused to rule out the prospect of job cuts as a result of the strict new funding models that accompanied the funding, which means hospital budgets would not be topped up if they overspent, which has been the funding model for several years.

When asked if the new budget models would result in job losses the Minister responded:

“The process of going through our budget is a process that we go through every single year. It’s business as usual.”

“We are in the middle of negotiating budgets, and we’ve invested an additional $1.8bn into the health system,” she said.

“This process is underway with each hospital and the funding provided to our health services is focused on delivering front line care,” she said.

Ambulance Victoria announced three executive positions would go. Picture: Getty

“Right now, we have more vacancies for healthcare workers than we have people to fill them. We’ve welcomed in more than 3000 workers from overseas we are actively looking to train the next generation of nurses and midwives we need every healthcare worker that we can get.”

It’s understood a number of positions have already been cut at the Alfred Hospital and job losses are looming at the Royal Children’s Hospital and many small rural health services.

On Friday, Ambulance Victoria Chief Executive Officer, Jane Miller, issued a bulletin announcing executive roles would be slashed due to funding constraints.

She acknowledged there were no cuts to funding by government, but that AV was “operating well above our budget envelope and this needs to be addressed”.

“There will need to be some tough decisions made, and some of these are already being addressed in revised operating models for three of our new operating divisions.”

It is understood the government has provided hospitals with new targets and is awaiting their response before deciding on their final budget allocations.

The state is also currently carrying out a statewide hospital review, which is widely anticipated to result in health services being merged.

The centralised strategy will reduce the number of organisations from 76 to 12.