Nationals Member for Ovens Valley Tim McCurdy hopes the Victorian Government’s newly announced $1.4 Billion Dollar Injection for Healthcare Omicron Response is enough to reduce ambulance delays across regional Victoria.
Mr McCurdy said, “In early December last year, the National Party wrote to the Minister for Ambulance Services requesting steps to be taken immediately to improve the poor performance of our ambulance services.
“At that time smaller regions like the Moira Shire had 40 per cent of their ambulance services arriving after 15 minutes or longer to code 1 callouts*.”
He continued, “It has now taken until 4 February 2022 for the Victorian Government to finally respond.
“Since December 2021, ambulance wait times have become considerably worse and our healthcare workers have continued to struggle.
“This decision by the Victorian Government should have been done sooner rather than later.”
Mr McCurdy added, “one aim of the Victorian Government’s funding is to get “more paramedics on the road sooner*”.
“The issue here is whether this funding has come too late for some of our paramedics who are struggling with the inundated stress and pressures of callouts within our regional areas.
“It is my hope that we not only support our current paramedics but focus on ensuring the $21 million state-wide triage services work effectively and efficiently to help ensure our paramedics are not called out to calls that are not in fact an emergency*.”
“I look forward to seeing how this funding operates through our regional healthcare sectors.
“I thank our paramedics, nurses and doctors for the incredible hard work and support they provide to our regions,” he said.
https://www.premier.vic.gov.au/14-billion-injection-healthcare-omicron-response*
https://discover.data.vic.gov.au/dataset/ambulance-victoria-lga-response-time-performance*