Elsie Lange
A community health organisation established to take pressure off the state’s emergency service has been knocked back in its request for state government funding, despite recent code reds called by Ambulance Victoria (AV).
HMS Collective provides aged care, disability support and in-home help, and is Australia’s first community paramedic service – it has now expanded from the Macedon Ranges into Sunbury, Melbourne, Geelong, Wangaratta and Ballarat.
Collective co-founder and paramedic Andrew McDonell said he wanted to emphasise how the service could work as a “circuit breaker” in preventing unnecessary ambulance callouts, with AV urging Victorians to only call triple-0 “for emergencies only”.
“The whole point of our service is to prevent health crisis and treat people in their homes, keeping them out of ambulances or hospitals and redirecting to general practice,” Mr McDonell said.
“From our data, in an average week, we are preventing around 120 hours of ambulance call outs, saving over $180,000 and increasing ambulance availability.”
AV has called several code reds this year, including one as late June.
Victorian Ambulance Union spokesperson Danny Hill told 3AW radio on June 28 a code red was a “disaster protocol”.
“They use that to try to incentivise, send out an alarm and an alert to [paramedics] to try and get them to come into work, but also to send a message to other parts of the health system about the strain that AV are dealing with,” Mr Hill said.
Responding to questions from Star Weekly, a government spokesperson described HMS Collective as “a private business operating in a marketplace” and not within the scope of the Department of Health to fund.
“We’ll work with the program to help them liaise directly with health services and primary health networks – which are funded to deliver care and services to the Victorian community and may look to partnerships that deliver home based services,” the spokesperson said.
However, Mr McDonell said the HMS Collective was the name for a partnership between not-for-profit HMS Community Limited, and private enterprise Health & Medical Services Pty Ltd.
HMS Collective community paramedic and innovation facilitator Jacqui Wilkinson said it had been wonderful to see the community welcome its support “with open arms”.
“HMS Collectives’ goal is to keep people safe at home and providing support when they need it. This means keeping people out of ambulances and hospitals who do not require those services,” she said.
