The devastating data that lays bare the triple-0 delays that cost lives

The devastating data on triple-0 delays reveals the heart patients who waited for help and the day just 13 per cent of calls were answered in time.

A damning review into triple-0 made headlines after revealing 33 Victorians had died after call taking and ambulance delays.

The review, from the Inspector General for Emergency Management (IGEM), detailed the devastating impact the pandemic, record call numbers and “longstanding” funding issues had on the state’s emergency call-taking services.

Emergency Management Inspector-General Tony Pearce said the system failed and it should have worked better than what it did.

“If you define failure as whether something performs to expectation or not, then yes it’s a failure in that the call-taking dispatch system was not able to perform to the standard expected by the community but also what we would expect as people who know how these things should work,” he told 3AW on Wednesday.

“It simply didn’t work to the standard it should have done and it didn’t deliver the outcome the community needed.

“The system should have worked a hell of a lot better than it did and it simply didn’t.”

Emergency Services Minister Jaclyn Symes emphasised “major structural reforms” were already under way and said the government accepted all recommendations and findings from the review.

But at more than 150 pages, it’s easy to get lost in the details. Here are the key figures you need to know.

The worst months

The report zeroed in on October 2021 and January 2022, as months with significant delays.

It was during the latter when one caller waited more than 75 minutes to connect to an ESTA (Emergency Services Telecommunication Authority) call-taker.

Calls delayed by a minute

The IGEM also revealed the sheer number of callers who — ringing triple-0 for urgent help — faced delays of a minute or longer, prompting Ambulance Victoria and ESTA to review their case.

These included more than 1150 calls for cardiac arrests, 470 events involving children under 12 and more than 3000 “time critical” adult patients between September 20 2021 and 15 June 2022.

Potential adverse events

Of the thousands of delays, the review identified 40 emergencies between December 2020 and May 2022, where people potentially died or were harmed because of call delays or, in three cases, ambulance resourcing or dispatch issues.

Thirty-three patients from these events died, but the IGEM noted only the Coroner could determine whether an earlier response would have saved them.

The average wait time for these 40 incidents — which the IGEM considered the “most severe” of “potential adverse events” — was more than seven minutes.

The longest delay — more than 50 minutes — was for a cardiac arrest case.

Eleven incidents were from October 2021 including six from just one day — October 6 — when almost 75 per cent of calls weren’t answered in time (5 seconds).

Percentage of calls answered in time

ESTA is supposed to answer 90 per cent of its calls within 5 seconds — and had been consistently hitting this benchmark before the pandemic.

But from December 2020 to June 2022, the agency — grappling with the highest numbers of calls in their history — failed to meet its ambulance target every single month.

January 2022 was the lowest percentage on record — dropping to 39.0 per cent — but it began to slowly increase from April onwards and fell short of the 90 per cent benchmark by just 3.3 percentage points in June.

While not captured in the report, ESTA reached this benchmark in August.

Increase in calls for ‘suddenly sick’

The IGEM also found an increase in the number of “sudden, serious medical problems” during the pandemic, with calls for chest pain jumping from 83,026 in 2019 to more than 103,000 in 2021.

While modelling linked spikes in Covid cases to spikes in call activity, the review also speculates the delaying of medical check-ups during lockdown may have helped increase calls for serious problems, such as cardiac issues.

Minister Symes said the review would help “prepare our system to be strong and resilient into the future” and pointed to changes already implemented — including $333 million in funding over five years.

“The ESTA today is not the same as the ESTA six months ago,” she said.

“I offer my deepest sympathies to those who have lost their loved ones during the pandemic.

“Our dedicated call-takers, dispatchers and other staff at ESTA have worked tirelessly to support Victorians in the face of sustained, unprecedented pandemic-related call volumes – we cannot thank them enough.”