The letter said the level of triple-zero call demand in Victoria was close to replicating Melbourne’s thunderstorm asthma event of 2016,when thousands of people suddenly started experiencing difficulty breathing and flooded into hospitals. ESTA was hit with the single greatest volume of calls for ambulance help in its history.
The letter said a call volume similar to this was being experienced daily,and it highlighted several adverse events that had occurred.
Another letter was sent on October 27,when,Mercovich said,ambulance call answering delays had worsened.
There had been two days when less than 25 per cent of calls had been answered within five seconds,he said. Ninety per cent of calls are meant to be answered within this benchmark.
The letter also raised staffing shortages as a major issue. However,it wasn’t until the next month that IGEM decided to conduct a review,which didn’t begin until January the next year,at which point ESTA was only answering 39 per cent of ambulance calls within five seconds.
This timing was questioned by Georgina Coghlan,KC,barrister assisting the coroner,who asked why it was not obvious from the time the first letter was sent in early October that urgent action was required.
“At this point in October,our priority was to make the minister aware how performance had dropped off,” Mercovich responded.
He said IGEM was not ESTA’s regulator but an independent assurance body.
A state government spokeswoman said that in October 2021 the government provided a $28 million increase to call-taking capacity in response to the advice that more support was needed. This followed a promise for 43 new staff made in the preceding state budget,she said.
“We are deeply sorry for the loss,trauma and grief of those who have lost loved ones during the unprecedented pressures our health system faced during the pandemic.”
In March 2022,whenThe Agerevealed that deaths linked to call answering delays had grown to 12,the government announced a larger package of $115.6 million for 120 new workers. By the time call performance recovered in 2022,after a further injection of funds,33 deaths were linked to the crisis.
Jaclyn Symes has been the emergency services minister since August 2021.
IGEM’s review,published in September 2022,found that “ESTA simply did not have sufficient ambulance call-takers to meet incredible demand”,partly because it had not been properly funded by the government.
Mercovich said ESTA was also reticent to seek funding to increase staffing in 2020 because of a belief that it had overspent that year.
“It was not going to be a good look for ESTA to request additional funding at that time,” he said.
A representative from ESTA,which is now called Triple Zero Victoria,is scheduled to appear at the inquest on Tuesday.
The inquest,which is being overseen by coroner Catherine Fitzgerald,was told during an earlierhearing that the significant triple-zero answering delay contributed to Nick Panagiotopoulos’ death and that if he had received early treatment,his chances of surviving would have been good.
With AAP