Call for an additional healthcare tier between presenting to a general practitioner and the emergency department

There are calls for Victoria’s urgent care system to be overhauled amid concerns paramedics are unavailable to respond to genuine life-threatening emergencies.

Ambulance Victoria is facing overwhelming demand. Picture: Luis Enrique Ascui

Victoria’s Ambulance union has reignited calls to overhaul the state’s urgent care system after another code orange was issued on Saturday night following a surge in triple-0 calls.

An Ambulance Victoria spokesman confirmed it experienced an increase in demand overnight, which was managed through its “standard and well-established escalation process”.

More than 50 orange escalations have already been issued this year.

A code orange is declared to alert the health system of increased demand for ambulance services or reduced ambulance fleet ability.

Victorian Ambulance Union general secretary Danny Hill said just one in five patients currently being attended by paramedics required ambulance treatment, while others were dialling triple-0 for less serious health issues.

“(Paramedics) are unavailable to respond to genuine life-threatening emergencies because they’re dealing with so many non emergencies,” Mr Hill said.

“They’re really going to patients who are struggling to get the help they need in other parts of the system, especially people who can’t get into a GP (general practitioner).”

Mr Hill called on the federal government to fund more urgent care facilities to offer an additional healthcare tier between presenting to a general practitioner and the emergency department.

“Right now, all those people are dialling triple-0 go into an emergency department,” Mr Hill said.

“There are nurses and nurse practitioners that could all be working on a teams-based approach to healthcare that is free, where people can walk in and get the treatment they need.

“That’s really what we should be looking at and if we keep sticking to the same model, where we just employ more paramedics and have them all turning up to hospital corridors, well, I don’t think we’re ever going to see the improvement.”

The state government has funded 25 priority care centres across Victoria.

Saturday night’s code orange comes after a patient was forced to wait 14 hours on an ambulance stretcher at Maroondah Hospital’s emergency department on Friday.

The patient waited for so long the paramedic crew changed over several times.

Mr Hill said the code orange was being declared “every couple of days” because of overwhelming demand on the ambulance system.

“This has been happening so often it’s almost become normalised … there’s been over 50 this year”, he said.

“The other issue that happened last night was a big shortage of our MICA (Mobile Intensive Care Ambulance) paramedics right across Melbourne – there were 13 dropped MICA shifts that we’re aware of and the MICA crews are the ones that respond to the highest acuity emergencies.”