‘Unacceptable’ triple-zero delays still happening, leaked data reveals

Victoria’s emergency services watchdog has privately criticised as “unacceptable” the delays that continue to plague the state’s triple-zero service after a Melbourne father of three died waiting more than 15 minutes for an emergency call taker to answer the phone.

The December 30 correspondence from the Inspector General of Emergency Management, Tony Pearce, to the widow of Nick Panagiotopoulos, admits her husband’s death is “not an isolated incident”. The letter is a clear indication of the depth of the ongoing problems within the triple-zero authority, and raises fresh questions about whether Victorians can rely on the service when ambulance demand surges.

Nick Panagiotopoulos, who died last year waiting for an ambulance, and his wife Belinda.

Mr Pearce’s letter describes “the real and terrible consequences caused by delayed answering of 000 emergency calls”. The Inspector General assured Belinda Panagiotopoulos that he would use the serious emergency response failings that may have contributed to her husband’s death to help reform the emergency response system.

“I will examine issues you raised such as the levels of staffing and performance in the context of the significant increase in call activity in the past year,” he wrote.

“My review will consider the effects of the COVID-19-related call volume surge on ESTA’s service delivery to the community and any broader national implications. The details of events such as Nick’s emergency on 16 October 2021 underpin my review,” Mr Pearce wrote in the letter, which has been obtained by The Age.

Data leaked from inside the Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority illustrates the extent of the problem when call volumes surge. The data, obtained by an Age and 60 Minutes investigation airing on Sunday night, reveals that on some days in January and February this year, thousands of calls were delayed, with potentially serious or fatal consequences.

Belinda Panagiotopoulos, whose husband Nick died in October, 2021, after waiting for an ambulance.Credit: Justin McManus

ESTA is supposed to answer at least 90 per cent of all triple-zero high priority calls within five seconds, but the leaked data reveals that on January 22, it took ESTA more than two minutes to answer more than half of the state’s 2386 triple zero calls for an ambulance. A day later, more than one-third of the 2481 triple zero calls took more than two minutes to be answered.

On February 15, the leaked ESTA data reveals that only 68 per cent of calls, rather than the required 90 per cent, were picked up within five seconds. On that day, ESTA’s internal staffing records reveal there were 14 fewer staff on duty than the number “optimally” required to deal with a surge of calls.

Multiple ESTA sources who were not authorised to speak publicly say the reason for the problem is chronic understaffing and a long-standing failure to ensure ESTA is equipped to deal with surges caused by freak weather events and the pandemic. The Age and 60 Minutes has confidentially interviewed more than half a dozen ESTA call takers. All describe a highly professional, dedicated workforce that is handling back-to-back calls during surges and is unable to meet demand because there are too few staff. Some Victorians are also still using triple zero for non-urgent events.

The inability of ESTA to deal with surges in demand has been the subject of multiple warnings dating back to a 2014 Auditor General’s report and subsequent reports by the state coroner and the Inspector General of Emergency Management following the 2016 thunderstorm asthma event that left ten Victorians dead.

But the scandal erupted late last year after a series of reports in The Age, including the October death of Mr Panagiotopoulos, a Preston father of three. Revelations his family experienced a delay of at least 15 minutes in being connected to an ESTA call taker prompted Mr Pearce to announce a major review into the failings of the system.

Mr Pearce has said he would report his findings to Emergency Services Minister Jaclyn Symes and State Coroner John Cain this year, although he could not guarantee those reports would be made public.

In his December 30 letter to Belinda Panagiotopoulos, Mr Pearce said his initial inquiries had determined that “it took ESTA 16 minutes and five seconds from its first opportunity to answer the call Nick made, to effectively answering a call from another party on behalf of Nick”.

“The 000 call answer delays that you experienced were unacceptable and outside ESTA’s formal performance target time for metropolitan ambulance speed of call answer ... I am conscious that the unimaginable loss suffered by your family is not an isolated incident.”

The state government last year announced the hiring of 43 extra ESTA staff, funded in the state budget, who are being trained. ESTA’s interim CEO Stephen Leane, who was appointed in October, has been lobbying the government for a further significant resourcing package in a move sources said was supported by the government.

Watch 60 Minutes at 8.40pm Sunday on Nine or read The Age online on Sunday, or in print on Monday, for more on this story.