As part of the Hodgman Liberal Government’s commitment to ensure Tasmanians receive the best paramedic emergency care, we sought a review into ambulance services and are releasing the report today.
We have already taken action on the review with our announcement in the Budget that we will fund two new ambulance crews, one each in Greater Hobart and Launceston, and they will be on the road as soon as staff are recruited.
The review was undertaken by the Department of Health and Human Services, and is part of our Patients First initiative.
The review identifies reforms to increase the efficiency and reduce demand on Ambulance Tasmania to ensure our resources are used in the best possible way to support emergency patients.
More than 210,000 ambulance responses were analysed as part of the review, which found that:
To respond to this increasing and changing pattern of demand, improvements are needed to ensure that our ambulances respond as quickly as possible to life threatening circumstances, while Tasmanians are provided appropriate care for their health conditions.
To address this the report recommends a range of initiatives including: moving to secondary triage – where the 000 call centre can direct non-acute patients to more appropriate providers; better use of Extended Care and Intensive Care Paramedics; patient management plans for frequent users of ambulance services; and further collaboration between Ambulance Tasmania, the Tasmanian Health Service and private emergency departments.
We will now consider the review more broadly and the Government will respond by the end of August 2017.
The review is available online at: http://dhhs.tas.gov.au/about_the_department/our_plans_and_strategies/at_review