More than a dozen ambulances have been filmed banked up outside a major metropolitan hospital as Premier Daniel Andrews faces accusations his party has downplayed the state’s health crisis.
Footage taken outside Maroondah Hospital in Melbourne’s east on Wednesday showed more than a dozen ambulances carrying urgent care patients reportedly stuck waiting inside the vehicles due to a full emergency department.
It comes after the Dandenong Hospital experienced eight hours of ramping late last week following a similar incident reported at Epping’s Northern Hospital in October last year.
The issue, which is not unique to Victoria, has been caused by emergency departments being at capacity during the pandemic, and what some have called a symptom of a health system in distress.
Facing questions from the opposition during question time on Wednesday, Victoria’s health Minister Martin Foley blamed the issue on the pandemic.
“Our ambulance services are under pressure like they have never been before,” he said.
Ambulance Victoria this year saw its busiest second quarter period in the service’s history, responding to over 91,000 code-one call-outs.
Experts have aired concern about the extraordinary pressure on health systems, predicting the issue would only get worse with each new Covid wave.
At the height of Victoria’s Covid outbreak late last year, Ambulance Victoria executive director of clinical operations Mick Stephenson said ramping was occurring daily.
“We are having longer delays at hospitals than we have ever had before,” he told ABC News.
“Our capacity to respond and our performance has never been challenged as much as it has been over recent weeks.”
Eastern Health confirmed the ambulance ramping at Maroondah Hospital on Wednesday, saying the health service was experiencing unprecedented demand at a number of its emergency departments.
“The impact of this high demand is further compounded by the number of staff currently furloughed due to Covid,” a spokesperson said.
“We encourage our community to keep emergency departments for emergencies only. And for non-urgent or non-life threatening conditions, please access alternative health care options such as your local GP if this is suitable.”
Ambulance Employees Australia Victoria secretary Brett Adie said ambulance ramping was rife in recent years across metropolixjmtzywtan and rural Victoria.
He said the current crisis was a result of years of public health organisations focusing on stretching the public dollar.
“Short cuts over the years to achieve KPI’s has meant services were pushed to the brink of capacity and staff were pushed to breaking point before Covid even existed,” he said.
“These organisations were patting themselves on the back for achieving KPIs of 85 or 90 per cent rather than questioning why they failed 10 or 15 per cent of Victorians.
“Ambulance Victoria staff were required to miss meal breaks, work unreasonable overtime, work in their leave and make other sacrifices just to keep trucks on the road and care for as many as possible.”
The pandemic has highlighted serious flaws in the state’s health system, including faults in its triple-zero service.
Major setbacks within the service have been unearthed in the past year amid the deaths of 12 Victorians, who all died waiting for ambulances.
The most recent was Cowes man Stewart Grant, who died in January after it took 40 minutes for paramedics to arrive.
Two deaths reported publicly last year were Melbourne residents Nick Panagiotopoulos and Christina Lackmann, who both died while waiting for an ambulance.
The Victorian opposition is pushing for the system to be overhauled amid review into ESTA.
Speaking before the Legislative Council on Wednesday, Liberal MP Cathrine Burnett-Wake claimed Victorians were being denied crucial medical and emergency support in times of crisis.
She said she had two constituents who had reached out to her in the last week to talk about their desperate attempts to reach emergency services.
One woman told Ms Burnett-Wake she had an offender on her doorstep while home alone with a young child, and had called triple-0 three times for police assistance.
The offender eventually left but no police ever showed up.
“Calls are supposed to be answered within five seconds – I can guarantee Victorians aren’t counting the seconds in their time of need, they are too busy trying to stay alive,” she said.
“The 12 Victorians who have died are added proof that seconds count.”
The opposition this week accused the Premier of downplaying the issue, when he stated during question time the state’s emergency dispatch service ESTA had met all of its targets before the pandemic.
Mr Guy claimed the Premier had avoided serious questions that needed to be addressed.
“This is not a matter of political spin or the government trying to give a political line, this is a matter where people have lost their lives waiting for an ambulance,” he said.
“We deserve answers and we deserve to know that the system is being fixed.
During question time on Wednesday, Premier Daniel Andrews said he was taking the issue seriously.
“I expressed my regret,” Mr Andrews said on Wednesday.
“If people’s expectations have not been met, if a system has struggled under that never before seen pressure then of course we have to do more.
“When we came to government our ambulance service had been smashed to smithereens, we repaired the damage that others had done and we will repair the damage from the pandemic.”
