Elsie Lange
On average, Sunbury residents are waiting longer than 18 minutes for an ambulance to arrive at an urgent care call out, recent Ambulance Victoria figures reveal.
Ambulance Victoria (AV) data shows the average response time to code one incident call outs in Sunbury jumped from from 17 minutes and 26 seconds in the last quarter to 18 minutes and 26 seconds in the first quarter of 2022-23.
Code one incidents – those which require urgent paramedic and hospital care – remained above the recommended average of 15 minutes for 50 per cent of Sunbury callers.
It is the longest average wait time faced by Sunbury residents in at least half a decade, according to performance response times data dating back to 2014.
However, across the rest of the state, ambulance response times stabilised, despite paramedics facing their busiest winter.
AV clinical operations executive director Anthony Carlyon said demand for ambulances remained at record levels in the first quarter of 2022-23 due to the continued impacts of COVID-19 and the flu.
“July to September was our busiest first quarter on record, and the second busiest quarter ever,” Mr Carlyon said.
“Together with the previous quarter, this was by far the busiest and most challenging winter ever. Our paramedics and first responders worked tirelessly to keep delivering world class care.
“This quarter also marked one year since the Medium Acuity Transport Service (MATS) crews dedicated to non-urgent calls hit the road, freeing up more ambulances for the most critical emergencies.”
Across the state, ambulances were called to 94,592 code one cases from July to September, which was a drop of 3335 code one cases from the previous quarter.
Across Hume more broadly, residents waited an average of 16 minutes and 28 seconds for code one ambulance call outs in the first quarter of 2022-23 – up from 16 minutes and 12 seconds in the previous quarter, but down from 16 minutes and 45 seconds in quarter two of 2021-22.
In the Macedon Ranges, code one response times dropped from 17 minutes and 45 seconds in quarter four of 2021-22 to 16 minutes and 53 seconds in the first quarter of 2022-23.
Mr Carlyon reminded Victorians that AV was still attending 1800 to 2000 cases a day and asked the community to help by saving Triple-0 for emergencies.
“While ambulances are always provided to patients when required, about one in five calls to Triple-0 do not need an emergency ambulance response,” he said.
