By Alesha Capone
A large increase in life-threatening emergencies in Wyndham, combined with COVID-19, has driven an increase in the municipality’s average ambulance waiting times across 12-months.
Figures released by Ambulance Victoria show that between October 1 and December 31, 2021, the average waiting time for paramedics to respond to code one emergencies in Wyndham was 15.33 minutes.
This was an increase of the 12.19 minutes average waiting time recorded during the same three months of 2020.
Code one incidents are classified as urgent, requiring an ambulance’s lights and sirens to be turned on.
Also between October and December, 2021, 63.5 per cent of the 3358 code-one ambulance call-outs in Wyndham arrived within 15 minutes.
In contrast, 78 per cent of area’s 2396 code-one call outs arrived within 15 minutes between October and December, 2021.
Ambulance Victoria metro regional director Michael Georgiou said the COVID-19 pandemic “continues to place unprecedented and sustained pressure on the entire health system”.
“In the Wyndham LGA (local government area), there was a 40.2 per cent increase in life-threatening code-one cases from the same time a year earlier – the second biggest increase in demand for any LGA,” he said.
“Paramedics attended an extra 962 emergency incidents during the October to December quarter.”
Mr Georgiou said the record demand in Wyndham was partly caused by a large number of COVID-19 patients requiring transport to hospital, along with significant growth in the area.
“In addition to an increase in demand for care, our performance in Wyndham has been impacted by time spent offloading these patients at health services along with the extra infection control requirements we have in place to keep our people and patients safe, such as wearing PPE and cleaning our ambulances,” Mr Georgiou said.
“We are doing everything possible to relieve pressure in the system and get more paramedics back on the road and to patients quicker.
“While there are signs that infection rates are slowing, we remain very busy and continue to ask all community members to help us by saving triple-0 (000) for emergencies.”
He said that Ambulance Victoria was continuing to invest in new initiatives to meet the growing needs of Wyndham.
“Last year, we had two additional ambulances become operational at Point Cook and Werribee to help meet increasing demand,” Mr Georgiou said.
